How to preserve your SEO when moving to a new business location.

As professional business movers who have dealt with moving offices and the like, we know that keeping your customers informed, and letting new customers find you, is extremely important when moving business locations.

For this reason, we thought we’d give you some tips on how to improve your local search engine optimization and preserve SEO after moving business locations.

Update all your online listings when moving to a business location.

This is extremely important. It is a task that, in the midst of moving business locations, you can forget to do. But it should be high on your priority list toensure that your search engine optimization stays in-tact when you do make the move and the dust settles down.

On this note, you will want to check and update your:

• Google My Business listing (this has had different names in the past, but it is essentially what puts you ‘on the map’ for searchers looking for a localbusiness address)

• Yahoo and Bing listings

• Yelp listing

• Facebook page and LinkedIn company page address details

• Dine Here, Urban Spoon, Zomato, etc. listings (if you’re a restaurant)

• Trip Advisor listing (if you’re relevant to the tourism industry)

• Hotfrog listing

• Angie’s List or Home Stars listing (if you provide home services)

• Yellow Pages, Can Pages or other online phone directory listings

• Other paid or free online directories you have been listed in by choice (boards of trade directories, government listings, association listings, etc.)

Hubspot has a list of more generic business directories you may want to check out here.

Be sure to correct and update your information on all these directories! If you haven’t verified or ‘claimed’ your business listings on the directories that offer this type of service, be sure you do so as well.

Also at this point, you may notice information that is outdated regarding the description of your company, owner bios, and so on. Take the time to write a goodbusiness description with great keywords (not overdoing it though). This may help you appear more relevant to search results for people who are looking for abusiness like yours. Also fill in photos, and as much as you can to enhance your profile.

And, if the directory offers a chance for customers to review your business, also take the time to ensure you are being represented properly online, and have responded to any negative reviews (if the directory allows you to do this).

See more info on this article from Search Engine Land:

6 Local Tips For Small Business SEO Success

However as you do all these efforts, don’t try to ‘cheat the system’ by trying to set up a brand new business listing and shutting down and old one that may have had a different address associated with it. Try to clean up your online presence, but do so by getting great reviews from happy customers. This is something you should be doing all the time anyway. Encourage honest reviews from those whom you’ve served, preferably close to the time they’ve had their experience with your business. And keep in mind, systems like Yelp can hide reviews that seem coerced, fake or influenced.

As SEO expert Neil Patel explains, this part of your off-site optimization is critical. See his article at the link below:

5 Things Most People Forget About Local SEO

Check your advertising material after you move your business.

Sometimes your advertising material may contain your address or an old phone number. For example, your address may be in your Google Adwords, Facebook ads or a display ad online.

Be sure to go through these, as well as any data feeds that may be automatically populating your ads with contact information. For more information on what data feeds are and how they may be affecting your business info online, be sure to ask your Adwords expert or ad manager.

For example, you may have a data feed set up in Google Adwords that will deliver a city name next to your product or service, if it is relevant to a user’s behaviour on your site. If one of your business locations is no longer active in that city, then you would want that part of your data feed corrected. For example, if it were our business, and let’s say we moved office locations, we would want an automated ad that said something like:

“Moving company North Vancouver”

To be changed to

“Moving company ________ “ (with the corrected city name)

This only would apply if you are using ads that contain this service, and if your ad manager has set up a data feed in this way.

Update your website’s contact page and info, and make it consistent with your online directories.

This is a given, however, there is a part to this that you may not realize: consistency with the way your business name and address is displayed online

In the article above by Neil Patel, it is pointed out that using identical information across the web can save a search engine bot (not to mention your customers)a lot of confusion. He says this about the importance of “NAP”, which stands for Name, Address, Phone Number:

“In order for the local search engine or directory to validate the presence of your local business, it must make sure that every point of data aligns perfectly.

So, for example, if your business name is Charlie’s Killer Crepes, and you accidentally type Charlies’ Killer Crepes (a misplaced apostrophe) in yourcitation, then the directory might register your business inaccurately.”

This is also mentioned in other online articles about local search engine optimization.

For multi-location businesses, you’ll also want to see this article for more important information on how local SEO affects you slightly differently. When you havea lot of locations, it’s even harder to keep track of which ones have moved, closed down, etc. We recommend keeping all your online listings in a single account for each directory, if the service provides it (such as being able to list multiple Google My Business locations in one login, as with Yelp, and so on). This can make it easier to manage as time goes on.

In addition to this, we’ll mention a ‘techy’ note, that you may want to ask your SEO to implement schema tags (or other meta data) to more accurately inform search bots of your address information. Then, if you really want to take things to the next level, you can look into geo-tagging for photos.

Change your e-mail signature even before you move your business location.

Your e-mail signature is a place where people can easily click to reach your website, find your contact information, and so on.

It’s an easy way to add a note that says “hey! We’ve moved!” and to then list your new address. You’ll want to do this as soon as possible, even as pre-warning to your upcoming business office move.

Still use the traditional ways of telling people you’ve moved your business.

In addition to the above, we still recommend that you tell people about your new address. Before you move, you may want to put up signage on your door or windows announcing the move. Tell your customers via an e-newsletter. And when you arrive at your new business location, let the neighbourhood know that you’re new here, but not a totally new business. And of course, update your print material, like your business cards

If you need help with our office or business moving services, give us a call at 604-922-2212 or contact us online and we’ll get you an accurate quote for your next move! We would be happy to add you to our list of satisfied customers!

See our related articles on moving a business!

• Moving your office can improve your business
• Easy Steps To Organize Your Office Move
• Moving an office in the digital age