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Best Practices For Moving A SAB Listing

I have a service area business (the address is shown because customers are able to come in, but we do service out in the field as well) and we have recently signed a new lease for an office that the business will move into next month. We have dozens of citations built as well as reviews, schema mark up on our site, flyers and print advertising and I'm interested in finding out the best method or actions I need to take to safely move my online presence and GMB listing to the new address. For reference we are moving about 30 miles away but will still be servicing the same area.

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What To Do When You Move SAB Listing Offices

Moving a GMB listing, whether a SAB or store front does indeed come with a number of potential risks but following a simple formula should mitigate those.

Follow these steps to safely move your SAB listing to a new location:

  1. Update Website Information - Have your developer (or yourself) update all of the address information on your website. Ensure that any pages that reference the old address are updated with the new address. Double check that all of your meta tags and schema don't reference the old address.
  2. Add A 'Recently Moved' Notice - In a prominent place on your website, add a notice to customers that you have recently moved to a new location. Make sure to add photos of the new location and provide driving directions from various points around your business.
  3. Mark Previous Listings Closed - There is a good chance that the office location you're moving into has already had a GMB listing (or a few) created for that address. Search for the address and locate any listings for businesses that were there before you and mark them as permanently closed via the 'suggest an edit' GMB tool.
  4. Update The Address In GMB - Once you have the steps above completed, update the address and move the map marker in the GMB dashboard itself. You can use Local Viking to make this step easy and painless.
  5. Update Any Maps On Your Site - Make sure to update any maps on your website to the new location's map.
  6. Update Data Providers/Citation Sources - This may be painful, but you'll need to update your listing's address in as many 3rd party citation sources as possible. Use this list from Whitespark to begin your journey: https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/
  7. Update Address With Offline Sources - You'll need to update your address for all business activities like your phone bill, internet bill, business license and any where else that may have your old address stored. It's important that you update as many places as possible with the new information otherwise your old address may find its way back to data aggregators and cause issues in the future.
  8. Update Niche Or Geo Specific Sources - Simply updating the largest citation sources won't be enough, you'll also need to ensure that you've updated your business information on niche specific or geo specific citation sources as well.
  9. Add New Photos To Your Listing - You'll want your GMB listing to have photos of your new location so updating your listing with new photos should be a top priority.
  10. Audit The Old Address - Run a scan for duplicate listings at your old address to ensure that you aren't leaving any listing accidentally referencing the old address and your business.
  11. Audit The New Listing - Double check that your new listing is properly showing your new address, that driving directions bring customers to the new address, that photos have been uploaded of the new location and that your website is properly citing the address that it should be.

Moving a business, especially when you've built an online presence around an initial address can be a difficult and time consuming task but not doing it properly can lead to customers showing up at the old location and decreased search visibility in Google.

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