Local branding messed up - advice needed
-
Note: not real names, services, locations used:
So we are a single health clinic in Vancouver. Our natural name is GSF Health Clinic. As the most important search term is Health Vancouver by far, we decided to kind of change our brand name to 'GSF Health Vancouver' years ago. Our main competitors name is Health in Vancouver and had had a hard time getting above them in local SERP. But actually, since the change in name, we haven't really improved. As there are also searches for Health Clinic Vancouver, some of our citations are actually GSF Health Clinic Vancouver just to get that keyword in. This variation even happens on our site.
Now, looking back, we should have just kept our natural sounding brand name and more importantly, kept the same exact one everywhere. However I'd like advice going forward. So the decision is whether we need city in the brand name - does it make much difference?
The options are:
- GSF Health Clinic Vancouver ("Health Vancouver" is not together, but we still have city name. Current citation on G+ and a few other places. A bit of a mouthful)
- GSF Health Clinic (Sounds nice, but poor SEO and also no exact citation matches currently so this is a major name change)
- GSF Health Vancouver (very targeted SEO, sounds okay but not amazing when in a sentence)
BTW our domain name is health-vancouver.ca
-
Hi Ali,
So, Google's guideline on this is that the business name should be exactly what it is in the real world (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en_). Businesses should not be adding modifiers to their name for the sake of search. If the business is now considering going through a formal/legal re-branding process, then this would be mean marketing-wide, including the website, all citations and other web references, the way the phone is answered, print materials, radio and TV advertising. You'll need to pick one name and use it everywhere. This will need to be the legal name or DBA.
Yes, it could be of some degree of help if the legal business name included the city in it, but whether this advantage would be great enough to warrant the major task of a formal re-brand will be a big decision for the company to make.
-
Hi,
I have read very recently published an article on 'Local SEO' written by not very well known but I have never missed his blog post and always learn something new. Please visit below URL. I hope it will be very helpful in your case.
http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/local-seo-guide/
Thanks
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
-
Change Brand Spelling after 8 years
After changing my complete site, citations, etc to a certain brand spelling--capitalize the first letter, I am being asked to add another capital in the spelling. Could this affect customer usability or ranking in any way? i.e. Mozcon to MozCon Thanks.
Branding | | RoxBrock0 -
LinkedIn & B2B Marketing/Brand Authority: How Useful Is It?
Hi Folks, I'm in the process of drawing up some detailed step by step marketing and content strategy guidelines and I'm currently researching LinkedIn as a platform and the potential benefits for B2B marketing on it and building brand authority. I'm coming across some conflicting data regarding how useful it is. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on the viability of LinkedIn for B2B marketing and building brand authority? A couple of questions would be: Is it a viable B2B marketing platform? Is it a good place to build brand and industry authority? What techniques would you concentrate on over others? Any advice on the subject would be great. Thanks, folks. Regards Gareth
Branding | | PurpleGriffon0 -
What is your thoughts on the proper way for one brand to promote a sub-brand.
Greetings fellow Mozers! How Do Major Companies Promote Their New Sub-Brands I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts on how and what is the best process to promoting your companies new brand. I see companies like Wayfair.com promoting their sub-brand "All Modern" and "Wayfair supply" (maybe "sub-brand" isn't the best term) in the top left of the page as a link. I believe this is only a SEO play because they are only outbound links to the brand website. If you go to "All Modern" there are no links back to Wayfair. I then looked at a company like Gap.com and notice that all of their other brands are promoted on the website and are also interchangeably linked to one another. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to link and or promote your smaller brand that could potentially turn it into a Major Brand. Do you think this is just a SEO linking play. I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts
Branding | | rpaiva0 -
The pros and cons of subdomain or new domain for a new brand?
Hi there Moz experts, We're launching a new brand and product offering for a completely different audience than we've worked with before. We're expected a significant amount of business to come from inbound marketing, so we're wondering whether we should launch the new brand as a subdomain of the parent company or as a completely separate domain. The parent company's website has thousands of inbound links and is over 10 years old, so I'm thinking in the short term it would be easier to get new content ranked there. However, in the long term I think it would be better for the new brand to have a separate TLD. Thoughts or other things I should consider? Thanks!
Branding | | EveryActionHQ0 -
Google + Brand Page for Multiple Locations
We have had our Google Places pages up and running now for a bit, and we are looking to start our Google + Brand page. What is the best way to handle a Brand page with multiple locations? Create a page for each location so we can connect them to their Places equivalent? Create one overall brand page and not connect it to the Google Places? A lot of the information I am seeing is around a year out of date with Google saying "something is coming" but no updates since then, so how have others in similar situations handled it?
Branding | | BeOnAir0 -
UGC Brainstorming - Need Some Help!
Hi All, I'm helping a client build an e-commerce store from the ground up, which sells class rings to high school students. Not a novel product, but they have a nice URL - WearMyStory.com, and are thinking through creative ways to reach the market by letting users share their stories with UGC. I have some ideas, but could use some help. I think using video/picture/essay contests for students to share their stories is a great way to get buzz and grow socially. What I don't know is how to capture all of this great UGC for SEO purposes. Do you know of any great sites with brilliant UGC strategies (outside of reviews, etc.)? Do you have any examples of software companies who help you leverage the UGC into SEO gold? I'm trying to find great examples of frameworks where sites are leveraging the UGC. The other wall I am hitting is how to create a community when it is simply a one time purchase e-commerce product. If a customer buys a ring (or any product for that matter), what would keep them coming back to the site? Any good examples out there that you can think of? Thanks!
Branding | | esztanyo0 -
Do you buy keyword strong domains around your brand?
Do you buy keyword domains around your brand? If so do you do this for future use or for redirecting to a sub domain off your core site or for other reasons?
Branding | | charlesgrimm0 -
Do I need a .com as well?
Hello Mozers, I need your advice. I have a new client that runs a paralegal shop called - Christophers Legal Advice up here in Canada ChristophersLegal.com is taken but ChristophersLegal.ca is available Question: Should I register ChristophersLegalAdvice.com and ChristophersLegalAdvice.ca and just redirect the .com to .ca (since both .com and .ca are available) or should I risk it and opt for the shorter url and just register ChristophersLegal.ca I'm thinking that I might be able to get away with just ChristophersLegal.ca since the site will be used to attract new visitors via the search engines and social media. What do you guys think?
Branding | | RogersSEO0