GMB page for law not ranking but individual attorneys' names are
-
I'm kind of a newbie to everything marketing. I run the marketing for a small law firm. When I google certain keywords, the law firm's GMB page doesn't show up in the local pack or rankings. What shows up instead are the individual GMB pages under the lawyers' names even though we don't do anything to maintain those pages. Their individual pages don't have content or nearly as many reviews. I maintain the firm's GMB page by posting content and that's also where the bulk of our reviews go. Why would pages that aren't maintained show up in the local pack while the page that I keep a close eye on doesn't show up?
-
Hi Elisa,
If your law practice were my client, I would have them take these steps:
-
Get a unique phone number for each practitioner. It can be any number the lawyer is reachable at during listed business hours. It can be their cell phone, a phone at their desk, etc.
-
Diversify categories as much as possible so that the lawyers aren't competing with the practice.
-
Link each practitioner's listing to a landing page on the website for just that practitioner. Put the name, unique phone number and address as the top of each practitioner's page and then write good, useful content for the page, optimizing it for longer tail terms rather than the head terms the practice is targeting.
-
Be sure you've updated all other citations that exist for the practitioners on other sites, so that they include the new phone number, more diverse categories and appropriate landing page link.
-
Build long-tail kw focused links to these practitioner pages.
These listings can be an asset to the business in widening the number of search terms the overall practice is able to target. So, before you consider abandoning them, I would advise the client to think seriously about how the listings could benefit the practice. I'd implement all of the above tips I've given and then give it a year to see how the practice feels about the benefits coming from having these more diversified practitioner listings. Of course, be sure you are tracking this in Google Search Console for the year! And do be sure you're having the client assess whether it's actually negative if the lawyers are getting leads, regardless of how rankings are playing out. If it's income for the practice, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
If, at that point, the practice feels it really dislikes having practitioner listings, it could strip out all of their details to de-optimize them. Remove all but one category, remove photos, hours of operation, etc.
But, before doing something drastic like that, I'd really evaluate the good that could be done with the listings, in properly handled instead of being a muddle like they currently are. Good luck!
-
-
Hi Miriam! I hadn't thought about any of this but you've given me a really great place to start.
There's only one phone number for the practice and it's showing up on the lawyers' individual profiles. Should I just remove the phone numbers from their listings and just leave it on the firm's profile? I'm currently working on creating different landing pages because all the profiles point directly to the homepage of the main website.
I currently don't see any penalties from Google although I'm going to go back and look at naming guidelines. Besides linking to different landing pages and phone numbers, what else can I do to de-optimize the individual listings?
Thanks again!
-
Thanks for bringing your question to the forum.
While this is a common scenario you are describing, the best I can do is offer general advice without seeing the actual client's results.
-
Are you duplicating GMB categories between the law firm and the practice? Try to avoid this, if possible.
-
Are you sharing phone numbers between the law firm and the practice? Don't do this.
-
Are there unique landing pages linked to from GMB for each practitioner? If so, are you optimizing these pages for the same terms as the overall practice is targeting? If so, diversify the practitioner pages so that they target longer tail terms while the main website pages for the practice target more head terms.
-
Are you doing anything with the brand's presence in GMB that could be causing Google to trust the practitioners more than the practice. For example, are you adhering to naming guidelines for both practice and practitioner? Have you resolved duplicate listings? Has the practice received any penalties, suspensions, or engaged in any forbidden practices like setting up listings for ineligible locations or acquiring fake reviews?
Evaluate all of the above and make any necessary adjustments. If, after a waiting period, you don't see the desired outcomes, the practice will need to determine whether:
-
It's a big deal, or not really a big deal, to have the lawyers outranking the practice for some terms.
-
If a big deal, the practice may need to decide to de-optimize the listings for the lawyers to remove as much of their ranking power as possible.
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
-
GMB illegal edits to phone numbers
A client in the skip hire sector contacted me to say that someone is submitting edits to multiple competitors' GMB accounts changing the phone numbers to theirs. It has caused a huge row and legal ruckus as the competitors naturally assume it is them diverting calls. It definitely is not them but could be lead generation companies they use or other competitors trying to discredit them. They are growing fast and are upsetting longstanding players. Has anyone come across this before? If so how did you handle it and is there any chance of Google listening to them and assisting in the situation. Any advice is gratefully received. PS these guys are very ethical and are mortified at the situation they find themselves in.
Local Listings | | KarenJames0 -
Need some strategy advice for Real Estate Attorneys in competitve locations
I am working with a real estate attorney in NJ. there are 17 real estate attorneys within 5 miles of my clients location. I need some strategic advice to rank my client higher quickly 2-3 month range. I have had him as a client since the begging of his practice (just opened in February 2016) I created the website and embarked on a content marketing strategy, this has produced slight raises in traffic. What could I do better to get him in local packs and generally raise to first page for long tail keywords? ( my other clients have not been so difficult but they also are not in such a competitive atmosphere)
Local Listings | | donsilvernail0 -
Individual practitioner NAP - unique "N", repeated "AP" Help!
We have a business where we have a number of doctor's offices, and at each office there are a few individual doctors. Customers often search for either the overarching brand or the specific doctors. Our hope is to optimize our listings so that we can rank in local SEO for both the brand name and doctor names. We have set up our local listings in Google My Business for all of the offices (common brand name, unique address, unique phone, unique landing page), but would like to explore adding individual doctor names in the listings too. The challenge is that each doctor within an office shares the address and phone number. They do have unique names (obviously) and landing pages, although the doctor landing pages don't have any specific contact information on them. My understanding is that we should have unique phone numbers for each listing. Unfortunately, this is a management and IT maintenance challenge. My question is - if we didn't use a unique phone number and instead used both the same address and phone number across multiple listings (office and doctors practicing there), are we violating Google's guidelines / damaging our overall rankings for all the listings? Does anyone have a sense of how bad this might be, so we can understand the risk/benefit? And secondly, would we make things worse by adding the non-unique address/phone to the individual doctor pages? Would this just reinforce inconsistent NAP, right on our site? Thanks!
Local Listings | | OneMedical0 -
Preferred URL structure for directory pages?
Hi Moz-Mind, We've got a bunch of duplicate content issues in our directory of trucking-related businesses, caused by search terms that can appear in any order, (classic mistake). We're taking advantage of this our work on URLs to try to improve our URL structure, and I'm not sure which way I want to go. These are the options we're considering. What does the Moz-mind think of each of them? example.com/location-name/service-name example.com/service-name/location-name example.com/service-name-near-location-name For the moment location-name would be a city & state abbreviation, like atlanta-ga, (unless it's better to use something else). Since these are search URLs, it's also possible to add a distance restriction, and a keyword, to the search criteria. How do you suggest adding the distance restriction? example.com/service-name/location-name/50-miles example.com/service-name/within-50-miles/location-name example.com/service-name-within-50-miles-of-location-name And the keyword? example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword/{actual-keyword} example.com/service-name-near-location-name/keyword Something else? I was leaning toward example.com/service-name/location-name/within-50-miles, but I thought of the /service-name-near-location-name/ and /service-name/within-50-miles-of/location-name options today and really like how they make sense both to computers and to people, not unlike example.com/GA/atlanta/service-name/50 I'm looking forward to hearing what the community thinks. There must be an established best practice for directories, but if it's kind of ugly I'd like to find an even better way, if possible. Thanks, John
Local Listings | | 4RS_John0 -
Opt out from certain Google properties - what's the downside?
Hi Moz Community! I manage a site where we want to have a support phone number for certain cases, but not for it to be front and centre for all our customers. At the moment, most of our unwanted call volume comes through the number showing up in SERPs due. We haven't included it in any of our listings, but it seems that Google has included it due to its presence on our site. We are now considering using the "Opt out from certain Google properties" tool on Google Webmasters but are concerned that by not playing by Google's rules that we may face some sort of penalty. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/opt-out Does anyone have any experience of using this tool or any thoughts on potential risks to our search rankings? Thank you!
Local Listings | | HireSpace0 -
My #1 (A) ranking client in Maps is now #38 after update?
We have a client with 4 locations and all of them do pretty well in Google Maps. Since the latest update, we dropped from #1 (A) all the way down to #38 in Maps. We're still #1 for our keyword in Organic but our Maps got crushed. We use Yext for the citations but we also do some a lot manual ones too. We have 3 reviews on that location but not sure why the big drop. I'm not even sure where to being to get it back. From our research: We noticed our categories were a little out of order. Our primary was "legal services" instead of "personal injury attorney" (we've now updated that.) I've noticed that all the listings ahead of us, minus a few of them, have their homepage as their link. We've always used a local landing page that has hand written directions on how to find us, our hours and who people will meet when they come in. Things relevant to that location. Our domain authority is a 40. Our homepage Page Authority is 49 and our landing page for that location is a 22. What else should we check to see what's happened? Should I move the Google+ page to the homepage instead of the sub-page (as well as the citations we have)? Thanks for your help!
Local Listings | | DarinPirkey0 -
My website is not ranking on google.
My website is not ranking on google. I use a SEO company and it has been more than 2 years and there has not been any improvement. I would like some pointers. My website is http://www.myperfectsmilesdentistry.com. Any help is appreciated
Local Listings | | ragster0 -
Google won't index my site?
Hi, I've just signed up and am new to SEO. I placed my site live around mid December 2013. Initially I got 2 pages indexed but now not even they show up for site:www.traditional-cleaning.co.uk. According the Moz analytics I have 3 pages with duplicate content which are: http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk/http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk/index.htmhttp://traditional-cleaning.co.ukProblem is I have no idea how to fix this, don't know whether Google isn't indexing my site because of this and generally am a bit stuck! Can anyone have a quick look at my site and give me a push in the right direction?
Local Listings | | EdwardoUK0