What is the best way to deal with a website that ranks #1 for their current local search terms, but they are moving their business to another city (moving from San Diego to Denver). However, location doesn’t necessarily play a factor in their business as a large amount of their clients are throughout the entire country.
Do we:
a) Let them just stick with the current location, don’t really bother with it and have them simply explain to people they recently moved (client recommendation, not sure how long that will work though).
b) Integrate the two cities throughout the website
c) Build a new site targeted at the new location, leave existing site up until new site is doing well.
Issue is that San Diego has millions of people, Denver has hundreds of thousands - much smaller market.
IMO the answer is obvious if location really isn’t a factor, but is it possible to leave some part of the business or maybe even a very small office in San Diego to keep your local listings?
Is there a need for clients come into the office at either location? A storage building for the business could probably constitute a local listing. I get a decent amount of my traffic from local listings. Your post kinda insinuates you feel the same way.
Adding on to your current domain would probably be my choice, but I wouldn’t rule out buying targeted domains and forwarding them to your domain either.
Unless your current domain is targeted towards San Diego then you might need to find another route. (probably forwarding and leaving a “We Moved” banner up for a while and permanently from all visitors referred from the old domain)
I guess you are talking about the site in your signature. If that is so all I suggest is to create a new index file we moved sign saying :
San Diego XXX company is now Denver XXX company. redirect it to the previous index page with a delay of 5-10 secs. And don’t forget to change the adresses
the steps you are providing will just help in getting rank in normal serp but i think it will not help in local listing serp. is there any guideline getting appear in local listing.
I think integration of two cities would be the best idea. If you are number one in one local place then of course it will give some benefits to you even though you moved business, start working for new location. Keep old one as it is.