4 shared locations - 1 phone number - legacy GMB - HELP!!!
-
I have a friend who is a dietician and has the following issue with his business
- He works in 4 different locations across town- Each location is shared with other practitioners. - he uses the same phone number for each location (free 0800 UK number)- he has legacy google places profiles for some locations with some reviews he'd like to keep and other locations he'd like to delete.He'd like to be present on page 1 of google for terms like dietician in "name of location he works in"I am clearly concerned about his NAP profile since he only has 1 phone number for all locations.The address of each location can clash with other practitioners working there who have already registered a GMB profile using the same addresses although there might be the possibility of using something like "suite x" to differentiate his business in the address.Can anybody advice on how they would approach this one please.Thanks
-
Hi Neil,
Unfortunately, if your client chooses to create 4 different listings with 1 phone number, he will be at risk for merging and possible ranking failures. If this were my client, I would not recommend that he do this. Honestly, if the client is only working 1 day a week at a facility, eligibility for inclusion in GMB sounds a bit iffy. I recommend that you contact Google directly to get their say-so on this, but a business that is only open 1 day a week could draw some scrutiny from Google.
-
Thanks for your answer Miriam, good job you're around.
i am not sure i was clear enough around the phone number issue. Basically he has his own phone number which he uses to take appointments for all his locations. He works 1 day a week in each location and the phone number is used to manage all the appointments. i believe this must be fairly standard for any independant worker based in several locations . Surely google can't expect anyone running a business of similar nature to have 4 phones Or 4 phone numbers?
-
Hi Neil!
In a nutshell:
-
1 GMB listing per physical, staffed location
-
A unique phone number for each location
-
If there are practitioners, they should each have their own phone number, too, if you want to create GMB listings. Preferably they should each have their own landing page on the website as well, linked to from the GMB listing.
-
Do not add fictitious suite numbers. Use real-world addresses. Google can typically sort through shared locations, but be extra vigilant in actively monitoring such listings, particularly if they share categories.
Any other arrangement will cause problems. Hope this helps!
-
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
-
Managing Multiple Outdoor (unverifiable) Locations in GMB.
Hello Guys, I have a question about GMB best practice for a physical location, it actually applies to two sites I have. 1. A predominantly online fitness site but with two 'clinic' locations, which are rooms i hire and cannot claim the location. 2. An in-person fitness service, with no physical location, other than my actual home, and 10-20 location pages that have in the past (pre-GMB) ranked quite well. My question really is, what is best practice here, how to you deal with multiple locations when you cannot actually verify you own them, because they are just areas you work in, run classes or meet clients etc? Thank You!
Local Listings | | scott_laidler0 -
Address consistency issue between GMB and directories
We have a mortgage broker client, ABC, who shares an address with another business, XYZ who is a loans company. A previous SEO agency created GMBs for these 2 businesses using the same physical address and recently, we had to resolve this issue of duplicate address with Google. ABC was happy for us to fix the issue up by putting a unit no. "A" thus making their address "#7A Smith Street" and business XYZ now has #7B on their GMB. Our question is will this affect consistency if we were to build citations without "#7A Smith Street" but just using "7 Smith Street" which is their REAL physical address? Business XYZ has also just contracted us for SEO which means we will end up building citations for 2 businesses with the same business address (but different phone numbers). Should we actually continue using "#7A" and "#7B" for citation building even though that's not what their address is? Thank you in advance for your response!
Local Listings | | Gavo1 -
Help hiring someone
We are a medium sized cleaning service in the Baltimore area and really need help with our website and organic listings. We used to be on googles 1st page before penguin came around and it killed our listing. We have survived for the last few years because of our good reputation and referrals. We want to grow now but have been finding it VERY difficult to hire a SEO company/person. There are so many scammers out there and the only companies I can find REAL reviews on are in the 10k or more range. I have been reading here and elsewhere trying to learn SEO myself a bit, but finding it a bit overwhelming. Any advice, or could anyone recommend an honest SEO firm that a mid sized company can afford. Thank you in advanced
Local Listings | | mongor0 -
Location in business name for listings
A while back, I changed 26 of our business listings on Google so that the business name included the city, for example: "Business Name Sheffield", "Business Name York", "Business Name Doncaster". It looked consistent, it was easier to read in Google Maps when searching for Eden Mobility and even better - it may have been the cause of positive impacts in our local rankings. Using the Moz Local tool, I'm now looking at rolling out this change out throughout ALL of our business listings on the web, including Factual, Yelp etc etc... Does anybody have thoughts on this? At the back of my mind I can't help but think that I should be consistently using ONLY the business name throughout all of my online business listings. Will Google consider each of these locations as separate business entities? Here's something I found in Google's guidelines: Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g. "Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters" instead of "Google") by including marketing taglines, shop codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions or containment information (e.g. "Chase ATM in Duane Reade") is not permitted. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I've seen some big businesses such as ASDA doing the same thing I'm doing - but I'm undecided!
Local Listings | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Multi location stategy
Hi, I would to get some advice on how to generate some links for my cleaning business in order to build high rankings across numerous locations for search phrases such as "house cleaning in [location]" and "domestic cleaners in [location]" etc etc. I'm hopefully on the right lines with my domain and url structure, and have set up numerous pages for each location (i.e. www.domain.com/cleaning-in-location) ticking as many of the on-page optimization boxes as possible (basically as per the whiteboard friday on mult-location businesses). I was thinking that for each location page I could set up a 'Things and places we like in [location]' in an attempt to showcase influencers' businesses, in the hope of receiving links and social mentions specific to each location page. Although this is a lot of work I was thinking that I should set up separate twitter and facebook accounts for key locations and start engaging with a local audience? From a local search perspective, is there more value gaining links from bloggers/websites physically in location_A to www.mydomain.com/cleaning-in-location_A?
Local Listings | | Anward1 -
Same location, same industry, same phone number, old name
Hey Moz! I was recently hired for some local SEO work and discovered this about my client. His business used to be called something else before he purchased it. He has the same phone number and same domain name, but there are Google My Business pages for both the old name and the new name, both of which have the same address, phone number, and domain name listed on them. I am not sure what the correct course of action is. Should I begin removing the old information? It seems as though there is no penalty in place but I don't want to build a campaign on a poor foundation. Is there a way to let Google know that this old page should not exist anymore? Any advice would by much appreciated!
Local Listings | | Trojan_SEO1 -
Local Rankings for Second Business Location in the SAME City
I have an issue regarding local rankings for multiple locations within the SAME city, and I'm hoping to start a productive discussion about the various options for helping a second location gain visibility in the local pack. Here's the context…My business is an electronic cigarette shop in New Orleans, called Crescent City Vape. Our first location (Uptown) opened up a year ago and ranks very well in the local-pack as well as organic results for target keywords, as well as brand terms. Our second location opened up 2 months ago, also in New Orleans (Lower Garden District), about 3 miles away from the first shop. This shop, however, is not visible locally or organically, unless we get extremely specific with a branded search query like "Crescent City Vape Lower Garden District" or "Crescent City Vape St. Charles Ave." It does not rank locally for "Crescent City Vape" or "Crescent City Vape New Orleans" We have one website: crescentcityvape.com -- and both shops have a location landing page on the main site: crescentcityvape.com/uptown
Local Listings | | djreich
crescentcityvape.com/lower-garden However, when we launched our local SEO work for the first shop, we used the homepage as the URL in Google+ Local, as well as all of our citations. When we launched the second shop, we used the location landing page as the URL for G+ and all of our citations. We also added a location modifier to the business name on G+ Local: Crescent City Vape - Lower Garden District Both shops have 5+ reviews on Google+ Local, and both shops have citation profiles that are better than any other competitor. I'm confident that the local SEO basics are covered…and this is evident from the solid local and organic rankings for the original shop. My concern isn't that the second shop is ranking worse than the first. I expected this. But I am very concerned that the second shop doesn't even rank for a branded search like "Crescent City Vape." You have to get unrealistically specific with local descriptors to see the G+ local result for the second shop. e.g. "Crescent City Vape Lower Garden District". Here are some of the options and questions I've been pondering. Would love anyone's thoughts on what's worth trying and what might be too risky…since obviously I do not want to sacrifice rankings for the original shop. Changing the G+ URL of the second shop to the homepage (rather than that local landing page). In this case, G+ pages for both locations would link to the homepage. Then updating Moz Local and other citations accordingly with the URL as the homepage. My concern is that this will end up hurting rankings for the original shop more than helping rankings for the second shop. Removing the location modifier from the second shop's Google+ Local business name. When you google "Starbucks" or "McDonalds" you get a local-pack that usually includes 3 of their locations in the pack, and none have location modifiers. I'm wondering if the modifier is sending the wrong signal, because right now, when you Google "Crescent City Vape" only the original location shows up with a local result. Changing the modifier for the second shop's Google+ Local business name to something like "Crescent City Vape: New Orleans E-Cigs". Some of our competitors have added keywords to their G+ names and it's been effective for them. I know this is not aligned with Google guidelines, and may be a risky play. We don't have anything to lose with the second location if we try this…However, is there any chance this would negatively affect our original shop's rankings (since it's the same domain)? If we went in this direction, should I update our citations accordingly? And build new ones with this new "name"? Does page authority of the business URL have an impact on G+ Local rankings? i.e. would building quality links to the local landing page have much of an impact? i.e. is that a productive use of time and resources, as opposed to promoting the homepage and other more important landing pages? Appreciate your thoughts and feedback! Hopefully this discussion will be helpful for other businesses trying to rank for more than one location in the same city. Thanks!0 -
2 businesses same phone number
I was wondering how I should approach a scenario where I am optimizing two different companies websites that have the same phone number but different addresses. This sounds like a weird scenario, however it is out of my control. Is treating them as two separate companies fine, or do I have to take special precautions when submitting business directories and what not? Thanks for everyone's help! As a side note, is their a way to use Moz Local with both companies, right now it is getting confused as to what business belongs to what listing.
Local Listings | | brfieger0