Does virtual office business listing offer local SEO benefits?: If you believe that virtual offices don’t have significant benefits for your local SEO, you live under the rocks. Virtual offices are considered a great launching point for small to medium-size businesses or startups in today’s digital world. There are many benefits to be experienced, including boosting local SEO rankings, enhancing brand image, and location-specific exposure. A virtual office is your online storefront where your company is registered. And, your day-to-day will likely be from a co-working space, home office, benefitting your on-costs. But how having virtual offices have local SEO benefits? Let’s get into it!
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Virtual office business listing – How Google views
As per Google’s official guidelines regarding business, if your business is staffed during business hours, you can create a business listing for your virtual office. Moreover, there are some other standards too that you should meet, which are below:
- Make sure that you create your business page at your real-world location
- Provide your phone number that connects to your business location
- Provide customer-facing hours details
Due to these strict criteria, the virtual offices with only phone numbers and mailing addresses can’t qualify as a GMB (Google My Business) address. So if you have just forward mail, phone calls, or mail address details for your virtual office, don’t optimize your business in local map search. Google may detect such business listings, so it is not recommended to use them. According to the search engine roundtable, those who use virtual office business listing to gain local online visibility are causing them to be caught. The most important thing is that SEO practitioners noted that your main listing could hurt in abusing the system.
Does virtual office business listing boost local SEO?
If we say an address of virtual office will help you compete in the industry and give your foot in the door, it won’t be wrong. Whether you have virtual office space or a town headquarters address, you can boost your local SEO and physical legacy.
A stronger reputation
If your website is not showing on the first page of search engine result pages, that means people will miss your offering. Businesses use local SEO ranking as proof of authentication and reputation. The virtual office address helps to boost your local SEO ranking while increasing brand awareness. This higher local SEO ranking comes with various benefits. Over time, this higher ranking will help you compete with both tangible and online companies.
Gain location specific exposure
Everyone dreams of a big office in the city center, but unfortunately, startup capital doesn’t allow you to do so. A virtual office can overcome this financial challenge. This way, you can increase site traffic while targeting geographic searches. For instance, you can grab yourself a South Carolina-based address via a virtual office, helping your site show up for South Carolina-based web searches. When you select your region, it will help you increase your overall reach and gain local online visibility.
Improve your Google rankings
There’s no doubt that virtual offices can increase significantly higher your local SEO ranking. So, all you need to step into this industry, future-proofing your authenticity, reliability, reputation, and status. It gives you a new demographic of clients and customers, and you can reach your targeted audience easily, which will increase your influence in terms of local SEO. Moreover, it will fortify your value as a business of choice. However, when you use your home address, your potential customers will consider you a one-person band instead of a reputed company. With a virtual office, you can grow your offering with more capabilities of moving into a tangible and city center-based company.
Gain local online visibility
Businesses with brick-and-mortar stores can experience excellent conversion optimization and visibility in search results through their online presence in this digital era. Once you place your business on Google Maps via your virtual office address, your brand awareness and engagement will increase. Moreover, you will have more visibility on search engines. When you consider virtual office locations and invest in a local SEO strategy, you will likely see more online visibility on search engines.
Map-based searches help more discoverability.
In this digital era, people can search for whatever information they want while sitting on their couches. When everything is at their fingertips, they tend to search to find better options. That’s why it is essential to understand that business searches are not like traditional desktop searches now. It has shifted towards map-based searches that mean you need to incorporate local SEO tactics to optimize your website. Map-based searches are becoming common. Instead of going to market first, people do a pre-search to find the best options available in their city or nearest area before buying anything. This helps the local searches to find local businesses.
It is always great if your local business appears on the first page of search results because 75 percent of people will never scroll past the first page of SERPs. It can help you get more customers and generate more leads. So, using a virtual office can help you boost your local SEO.
Bottom line:
A virtual office is a great and affordable way to increase your company’s search engine optimization performance in local SERPs. But make sure that your virtual business listing (phone number, name, and address) matches your website, Google, social media, and others. A virtual office can help startups or SMEs by supporting local SEO. If you are a local business and your focus is to reach local customers, it’s essential to invest in local search engine optimization. Your virtual office address can help you show up in map-based searches when potential customers search for your services or products. However, your business must be at a real-world location. It will violate Google’s guidelines and is risky. Make sure to follow Google’s policies regarding Virtual office business listings to get local SEO benefits.
Does virtual office business listing offer local SEO benefits? | Blog Article | SEO After Coffee | June 25, 2021 | All Rights Reserved.
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