How to Not Lose SEO When Moving Offices

If you’re reading this, you care about keeping your business’s hard-earned SEO intact, especially when you go through an office move. Here’s the good news: we’re experts at website design and SEO, and we’ve been there, helping clients during their transition. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to not lose SEO when moving offices.

1. Perform a Website Update

One of our MSP marketing clients, SkyTerra, was growing and needed more office space. If you’re facing the same kind of transition, the first thing you have to do to save your SEO during a move is to perform a website update. Start by updating your website’s footer, contact us page and location page with the new office address, phone number and any other relevant contact information. 

You should also scan the entire site to make sure all references to the old office address are updated. Here’s another pro tip: Include a notice on your website, such as a banner or pop-up, announcing the pending or recent office location change. This way, visitors immediately know about the relocation, and search engines can recognize the update.

For SkyTerra, the BigOrange Marketing team developed a blog post on the move and highlighted how the company is now the host of the Granite State Microsoft User Group.

SkyTerra hosting the Granite State Microsoft User Group at their new office.

2. Update Your Customer and Vendor/Partner Communications

When you move offices, you have to consider how you communicate the change with your customers, vendors and partners. Start by updating your email signatures, templates and any automated email responses to reflect the new office address and contact information. 

If you send out physical letters or mailings, make sure to update the return address and contact information accordingly.

Want to make the most of your office move? Consider it as an opportunity for your sales team to reach out and share the exciting news about your expansion. This approach can reinforce customer relationships and create a positive impression of your company’s growth.

3. Do a Citation Burst

You might be scratching your head, thinking “What the heck is a citation burst?” A citation burst refers to the process of consistently and accurately updating your business information across various online directories, review sites and local listings. 

When search engine crawlers find a citation for your company, they use it to provide information for end users trying to find your business online. They take the citation into consideration whether or not the information is correct. 

Making all the contact information consistent helps your website maintain its search engine rankings and local visibility, ensuring that potential customers can easily find your business in the new location. Citation bursts also improve your business’s online reputation, as consistent and accurate information establishes trust and credibility with both search engines and users.

Without going through and updating your office location in a bunch of different places, your company risks its reputation if a web search finds inconsistent information.

Want to learn more? Here are five reasons why citation building matters.

4. Leverage Your Social Media Accounts

Social media platforms provide a powerful means of reaching and engaging with your audience, including existing customers, potential clients and local communities. When you actively update your social media accounts to reflect the new office address and contact information, you can ensure that your followers and fans are informed about the relocation. 

Here’s the best part:

Sharing updates, photos and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the new office can generate excitement and curiosity among your audience, which drives traffic and engagement to your website. 

Social media platforms are also indexed by search engines, and having an active and relevant social media presence can positively impact your SEO rankings. 

5. Take Advantage of Marketing Communications

While digital marketing is crucial for SEO, traditional printed materials still play a valuable role in brand recognition and offline marketing efforts. Updating these materials with your new office address, phone number and website ensures consistency across all touchpoints of your business. 

When people get printed materials and visit your website or search for your business online, they will find information that aligns with the physical materials they have received. 

The bottom line?

Consistency enhances credibility and helps search engines validate your business information, increasing your SEO rankings.

Bonus Tips: The Office Move

While your SEO is covered, there will no doubt still be headaches during the moving process. Here are some quick tips on moving your tech and people. Be sure to assess or confirm:

1.  Internet connectivity in your new space. You want to confirm that the transfer or implementation of internet service will be as easy as possible. Installation scheduling for connectivity services usually runs about three weeks out once you sign the contract.
2. Phone service setup. With most new phone systems, once you sign the contract, hardware can arrive and back-end setup can be completed within two to three weeks.
3. Space considerations for technical infrastructure. Once you choose the location for your new office and have designed the space layout, give your IT team or service provider a scaled floor plan as soon as possible.
4. Network equipment needs.  Leave room in your budget for new hardware, as it is rarely a one-to-one translation between old and new locations in terms of network needs.
5. Scheduling and planning. It is safe to plan on at least a day or two of downtime prior to the occupancy date for the actual transition to the new space. You’ll need to make arrangements for any necessary workflow to keep your company’s critical operations running.

How to Not Lose SEO When Moving Offices: Next Steps

No matter how your website is built, your business needs to get leads and grow. If you don’t have a strong StoryBranded message or have a confusing message, you could be missing out. Contact us today for a non-salesy discussion on where our web development services could take your organization.