Using a Virtual Address for Google My Business

You want to rank in Google My Business, but you need an address to compete. I will walk you through how you should choose your address and which addresses to stay away from.

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

[transcript]

Everyone thank you for joining me on another episode of Adam Answers SEO which is a sub-channel of The Steele Entrepreneur Show. If you haven’t subscribed yet please do, you’re gonna like this content if you’re into SEO, or Google My Business, or anything really SEO link building, that type of stuff.

Today I’m gonna talk about Google My Business but specifically addresses, and what kind of address you should be looking for if, for example, you don’t have a specific business address. You don’t work out of a specific location, perhaps you are a freelancer and you work out of a coffee shop, that kind of thing or you work out of your home and you don’t want to use your home address.

I’m gonna go through a couple of options. The first and I suppose most obvious option is using your home address. Not a bad idea it is legit. However, in that case, you need to hide your address I believe per Google rules. I don’t know how much flexibility there is around that, I would check out the Google guidelines as they change constantly.

But my understanding is as long as you hide your address you are good to go. I guess one sort of caveat if you do indeed see people at your house I would imagine that’s okay. Most folks don’t and most folks probably wanna hide their address just for the sake of not having random people show up at their house.

Some businesses that might actually happen so you wanna avoid that. So if that isn’t an option, if using your home address isn’t an option and maybe you don’t live in the city you wanna rank in or maybe you live in a suburb, and all the traffic is in the main closest city, then I don’t recommend the typical virtual offices of the world like Regus or Da Vinci, I can’t really think of any others, those are kinda the two big or like UPS for example.

I recommend using something called a co-working address, you’ve probably seen this, if you haven’t there are these little shops that have been popping up all over the place for the last few years where you can rent a desk or rent a little office space, it’s kinda almost like an incubator but not quite.

And a lot of them have mail forwarding services, at least the good ones tend to. I found that, and I mean this could be like downtown or in a big city, the prices range from 20, to 30, to 40 bucks per month per mail forwarding service. And why I like these is one, there’s not a tonne of paperwork to fill out.

I found with some of the others there’s a lot of forms filling to do, and when you just wanna set one of these up real quickly all those ones could be a real pain in the butt. Also a lot of them are set up online in that you can sign up online and that’s it. So really, really, easy.

What else do I like about them? They’re kinda off the map, and by that I mean I perceive them, or I understand them or I’ve sort of seen them to be a bit off Google’s radar. So they don’t have kinda of a target on their back in the same way I think that Regus and the Da Vincis of the world or the UPSs of the world, they’ve just been exploited so much.

They’re saying marketers ruin everything, we’ll they’ve ruined those addresses in my opinion. So I’ve said it won’t work work but if I’m making an investment in citation building and all that kind of stuff, then I am definitely not going to risk that on an address that, Ridges and Da Vinci, they tend to more expensive anyways.

Not to mention like I said, more work to set up and all that stuff. So I’m co working addresses like I said they’re popping up all over the place. I don’t hear in Vancouver, they’re very easy to find. I have a favorite of mine I think its like 25 bucks a month, and once I perceive peoples card, I just cancel my subscription and it’s all good.

And we’ve used these plenty of times here in Vancouver we have plenty of clients and they’ve been live for years. Like five, six years, something like that. So we’ve never had any trouble. I’ve never really heard of anyone having any trouble with them either. So that’s what I would recommend for those.

I would not recommend PO Boxes I mean even if you get one of those to stick with which I doubt it, that would be a bad idea. You want a real address and these sort of co-working joints will hook you up with a real address, with a suite number. You don’t have to worry about the box number, just use the suite number they give everybody else, your address doesn’t need to be unique from everybody else’s.

The main bit is that your business phone number is different. That’s sort of the most important thing and ,of course, it’s always important to make sure your URL and your business name are different. But your address being the same as other businesses is not a big deal, and that’s just because it’s a very common thing.

Lot’s of professionals use addresses where other professionals also reside. Think accountants, think lawyers, think doctors, it’s just sort of a known thing, realtors are another good example. So co-working addresses I think that’s the way to go. It’s been sort of my favorite for a long time now and like I said, very easy to sign up generally speaking.

You should be able to find one in the city of choice because they are very popular and super inexpensive. So give that a shot, if you have any other suggestions please let me know. And as always if you found this video helpful I do hope that you’ll take a moment to subscribe. And even better leave me a comment, let me if you liked it, let me know if you have any questions I would surely be happy to help.

Thanks so much guys have a wonderful day.