Competitors at the same physical address

[ahead4]

Hi,

I have two particular clients who I built websites for and they work in the same industry as one another. To add to this, they both have the same geographical location. So, for example when you search Google for 'fencing contractors in [county]' they both appear underneath each other next to the map and have the same address.

The problem is that client A doesn't rank as well as client B and client B seems to get outranked by its Yell listing. Both websites are similar in size and markup structure. The content although based on the same topic is written differently and isn't exactly sparse. Client A launched their website probably about 6 months before client B.

I have a hunch that Google may be penalising client B, thinking that it is in fact the same business as client A due to their physical location or is somehow trying to copy client A. Does this hunch have much ground in the SEO world and if it is possible, what are my options to help remedy the situation?

Unfortunately I've never had the situation where two competitors of each other are literally in adjacent offices!

Ideas anyone?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ahead4!

Google's local product takes into consideration the concept of an industry centroid - for example, an area of town where most restaurants, insurance companies or car dealerships are located - so I wouldn't immediately think that Google would have any problem with 2 businesses of the same industry being in the same region. That being said, in investigating this, I would want to look carefully at details like the distinctness of each business name, address and website content.

I would want to be sure that citations are completely distinct for each business and haven't accidentally gotten mixed up on any of the major platforms.

Age is also a factor - if Client A is six months ahead of Client B, then they may have earned six months more of 'trust' in Google's book and their citations may have had that much more time to go live and settle in.

I'd also be curious to know, if you are managing both clients, did you build their websites identically (same language in menus, calls to action, etc.) that could lead Google to believe these 2 websites are just cookie cutter templates of one another? Are there other things you might have done that are similar enough to make you uneasy about Google possibly confusing the 2 businesses as being just 1? Content that is actually too close in wording or a link profile that it is nearly identical or a social media outreach that is the same for both businesses?

And, of course, a very important question here would be that the business addresses are, indeed, unique. You've explained that the businesses are next door to one another, but their street addresses are totally different, right?

As Kayintveen_MD has mentioned, there are many nuances to this situation that bear investigating. I've quickly brainstormed a few here but I am sure there are many more. At the end of the day, though, Google understands that similar businesses are often located in a certain part of town and that, alone, should not be cause for fear of penalties. When you have 2 clients in the same town and industry, only one of them is going to be #1, which is likely why many Local SEOs will not take on 2 clients in the same business and city. You might find this article helpful in your further troubleshooting:

http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures

[kayintveen_MD]

There is so much more to investigate to pinpoint this issue, to really wrap your head around it you should check things like inbound links, address/company cites around the web, maybe even compare the MOZ statistics like DA and PA how well pages are scored. before getting a little bit better understanding if A really out performance B but doens't rank well as B, then there is a big change there is something else at play, maybe preffering the other because of better, more unique content?