Multiple Google+ Local (Google Place) under one email address
-
As a automotive dealership group, we have 15+ business listings set up under one Google+ local account. Google+ Local (Google Places) offers the ability to upload a data file for 10+ listings, so we've kept all listings under one login for efficiency.
Is there any specific local SEO benefit or any general benefit at all to having each business listing set up under their own separate email address?
-
Hi Again Autoczar,
Yes, so ideally, you'd have domain-based email accounts for the different businesses if one is Lexus San Francisco and the other is Toyota San Francisco, if you're dealing with separate websites and separate NAP for the different businesses. If all of your businesses were Autoczar Lexus across 15 different cities, it would be most correct to have a single account to rule them all, but it sounds like there is a genuine difference in the dealerships.
I would definitely wait for the merge before doing anything, because I think there is likely to be some fallout from that and you'll want to see where you stand once it goes through. Then, you might consider transferring ownership to separate accounts for the Lexus dealerships vs. the Toyota ones, but as I've said, this will not be 'fun' to do.
-
Miriam -
Thanks for your helpful & quick response.
The 15+ business listings are individual dealership locations (ie Lexus of City Name & Toyota of City Name) are all currently grouped within one login so I (the dealership group's SEO guru) can manage all the information/implement best-practices from one single login.
We are debating setting up different @dealerdomain.com accounts if there is a SEO benefit. I am wondering how the Google+ & Google+ Local merging will happen regarding dashboard admin, so I'll wait to do anything until after that happens.
You confirmed what I was looking for, "There is no SEO benefit, at least not that I've ever heard of, of going with one account vs. multiple accounts in this scenario...."
And you are correct, separating out the Google+ Local from the multi-account setup is a big job if we decide to go the domain-based email address direction. We are currently weighing the pros & cons related to, "Google apparently trusts the domain-based email address to be more authoritative."
Any further insights appreciated.
-
Hi Autoczar,
I want to be certain that I'm correctly understanding your business model. Are you saying that you are currently controlling 15 different auto dealerships with distinct NAP (name, address, phone number) and distinct websites from a single email address? Or, are you talking about a franchise (different address and phone number, but all businesses are called 'Joe's Auto Showroom' and owned by you)?
If the first, then having each business claimed from a separate account would be preferable for the reason that Google has stated that there is a trust signal in having a domain name email address on the account. So, it's better to claim and control Joe's Auto Showroom with the email address joe@joesautoshowroom than it would be to claim it with bill@billscaremporium.com. Google apparently trusts the domain-based email address to be more authoritative.
If the second, and you are managing a franchise, then keeping all the eggs is one basket is the smarter choice in many cases, most particularly for ease of management. In this way, you, the owner, have control over how all data is managed. In some instances, however, franchises make each franchise partner responsible for his own web presence, including claiming and management of a Google+ Local page. Problems can arise in this situation when partners don't understand best practices, of course, but that all really depends on what each partner has been taught about Local SEO. There is no SEO benefit, at least not that I've ever heard of, of going with one account vs. multiple accounts in this scenario, but there is definitely a consideration of ease of management.
Now, all this having been said, if your accounts are currently set up one way, and you are going to change that in whatever direction, be prepared for a big job on your hands and possible wonky outcomes. Google is almost comically ham-fisted when it comes to business owners updating data - even a simple thing like a change of phone number can cause months or years of problems for the business owner, so my advice is to think this over very carefully and proceed with caution. Good luck!
Miriam
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Designworks-SJ1 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Fetch as Google
I have odd scenario I don't know if anyone can help? I've done some serious speed optimisation on a website, amongst other things CDN and caching. However when I do a Search Console Fetch As Google It is still showing 1.7 seconds download time even though the cached content seems to be delivered in less than 200 ms. The site is using SSL which obviously creams off a bit of speed, but I still don't understand the huge discrepancy. Could it be that Google somehow is forcing the server to deliver fresh content despite settings to deliver cache? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
How to leverage Google Images?
My Google search rankings are improving rapidly at the moment, but a lot of my rankings are for images (presume that means the images are appearing near the top in Google Images). How do I capitalise on that? It's not really much help to me that my images are popular unless it results in traffic to the pages where those images are used. I am running Wordpress so I have the option to have images embed as "no link", "link to attachment page", "link to original image", etc. Is there any advantage of using one of these over the other? I'd really like to set it up so that when a Google Images user clicks "View Image" it loads the attachment page or the host content page rather than the image. Bad SEO? I'm not sure if the fact that I'm using Jetpack Photon CDN image hosting will make this more complicated or not. Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
One Website, Multiple Locations, One Blog?
There's definitely not going to be a "right" answer to this question, but I think it can lead to a great discussion. We are building a website for a client who has two locations, we are going to use a URL structure similar to this: www.Brand.com (this would be a landing page where users would select a location) www.Brand.com/Atlanta www.Brand.com/Boston However, we still want to focus on local SEO - so our deeper URL structure will be: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer The content on those pages will be unique and target local keywords. Each "version" of the website will have a navigation specific to that location. For example, once a user clicks into the Boston website, all of the navigation items will pertain to Boston. However, we run into an issue with the blog. Both locations will be using the same blog content, which ends up looking something like this: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Blog/Blog-Article www.Brand.com/Boston/Blog/Blog-Article This obviously creates duplicate content. We could do something such as this: www.Brand.com/Blog/Blog-Article However, as noted above, each local version of the website has a separate navigation (this keeps a user in Boston on the Boston version of the website). So have a centralized blog is far from ideal unless navigations for both locations are included - which would allow users to return back to their local website. From my understanding, duplicate content doesn't necessarily "hurt" your SERPs, it simply keeps one of the duplicated pages from ranking. So the question comes down to this, is duplicate content a big enough issue to restructure a website to use a centralized blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McFaddenGavender0 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Mutiple businesses, same address and suite?
Hey guys, We have several businesses, two agencies and one online store all sharing the same address and suite. We aren't focused on getting local foot traffic at all, but I've seen the benefits of local citations + google+ and local directories. Is there any negative to using the same address with Google? Will they eventually see that and devalue anything SEO wise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Multiple blogs for seo
I have signed up for some rather expensive lawyer directories that have very high domain PR, 's of 6 or 7 . Some of these allow you to make blog posts or articles on their site which should be good for SEO because of the high domain PR. I understand that if I do a lot of posts on one of these blogs with links back to my site, I should rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns because they are all coming from the same domain. Therefore, I plan to mix up my blo posts betwee several of these sites and also rewrite them and post them on my own site's blog. My question is this, if I post on any of these sites and I link back to internal pages of my site, and not to the home page, does this offset the "diminishing returns" factor? Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diogenes0