Expanding your business’s reach doesn’t always require flashy headquarters or expensive real estate. In fact, with the right strategy, you can grow your brand’s presence with a Small Office Home Office (SOHO) setup. A SOHO allows businesses to establish a local presence in multiple areas without the hefty costs of traditional office spaces. This approach is particularly beneficial for contractors, consultants, online service providers, and small business owners looking to enhance their visibility in key markets.
Renting a traditional office in every service area can be prohibitively expensive, especially for businesses just starting out or operating on a lean budget. SOHO offices offer a cost-effective alternative by allowing you to:
When potential customers search for services like “plumber near me” or “digital marketing Dallas,” search engines prioritize businesses with a local presence. Having a SOHO in multiple locations can significantly improve your chances of appearing in local search results and navigation apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps.
Without a verified local address, your business risks being excluded from these searches, potentially losing leads and revenue to competitors. A SOHO ensures your business has the geographical presence necessary to capture these opportunities.
Before you jump into setting up a SOHO, it’s crucial to understand Google’s rules for local listings. Here’s the deal:
Pro Tip: Rent a small room, add your business logo to the door, and use a call forwarding service for any incoming calls to maintain legitimacy. Photos of team members answering phones or interacting with “clients” can help establish credibility.
A SOHO is more than just a cost-cutting measure—it’s a foundational tool for local search optimization. By having physical addresses in multiple service areas, your business gains access to:
Once your SOHOs are set up, they become integral to your local SEO strategy. This includes creating location-specific content, setting up service area pages, and linking each office to relevant local citations. When combined with high-quality backlinks and targeted keywords, SOHOs ensure your business dominates the local search space.
To maximize the effectiveness of a SOHO strategy, follow these steps:
Building a multi-location presence doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. At Rise Local, we specialize in helping businesses use SOHOs to increase visibility and dominate their local markets. From navigating Google’s guidelines to optimizing your search rankings, we handle every aspect of your local search and SEO strategy.
With a smart SOHO strategy and the expertise of Rise Local, you can expand your reach, attract more customers, and grow your business like never before.
Contact Rise Local today to schedule your free marketing consultation. Together, we’ll create a custom strategy to turn your modest business into a multi-location success story!
It’s important to have an office in any city you hope to serve. A physical address in those geographical areas will help you show up on local search results pages and in navigation applications like Google Maps or Apple Maps. However, if you can’t afford an office, or it doesn’t make sense to have a physical location for your industry, you may just want to use a SOHO. A SOHO is a small office or home office that helps spread your online reach further.
If you need an additional marketing boost, we highly recommend that you invest in a SOHO. These setups are perfect for folks with minimal staff, offer an online service, or rarely have customers visit the office. Anyone that works as a contractor, consultant, operates an online store, or works in a similar industry can likely conduct business from a small home office. Aside from the obvious benefits of having a multi-location business, SOHOs provide a lot of other benefits too.
A SOHO will save you bundles of cash! Whether you’re working from a small home office or renting out a cheap one-room office somewhere, you’re going to save a bunch of money on rent and utilities. You’ll also avoid steep gas prices and wear and tear on your vehicle since you won’t actually have to work at those locations.
Any time someone performs a local search query (ex. digital marketing dallas), the search engine will index websites and determine which businesses are a good fit. If you don’t have an office in that area, you likely won’t show up and could lose a sale. This is particularly unfortunate if the buyer is in an area where you provide services.
Google doesn’t allow businesses to list virtual offices on Google My Business (GMB). While you can just set up a mailbox somewhere and claim that you have a residence there, you may get shut down. Google’s guidelines state that to claim a listing, a customer must be able to physically call or visit the office.
Fortunately, there are plenty of workarounds to this rule. Generally, we suggest just renting out a small room, putting your logo on the door, and setting up a call forwarding service.
To make sure Google doesn’t contest your listing, you’ll also want to take a few extra steps. Photos will play an essential role in getting your business verified. Send in some models in company uniforms and take photos of them answering phones and interacting with “clients”. Once this is done, you can lock up and use a forwarding service to take any calls that go to the office.
One key thing you should consider when setting up a remote SOHO office is to ensure that none of your competitors are using that space. If they are, your being there will quickly turn into a battle of reporting one another, and Google will likely suppress your listing. If you’re working from a home office or piggybacking on a trusted family or friend’s address, this process will be a lot easier.
Build a multi-location brand on a budget with the help of Rise Local and SOHO offices. We are a Dallas digital marketing agency that specializes in local search and SEO. We have the tools and expertise to help you rank at the top of search results in your preferred service areas and give your competitors a run for their money. Contact us today to schedule your free initial marketing consultation. Together we can develop a custom local search visibility strategy to make your business a local success!
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