What To Do With Two Business Having The Same Name?
-
Hi friends,
We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything.
We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up.
Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?
-
Hi Samuel,
I see ... thank you for explaining what you meant about the dates. You're right, no one is going to search for the business name/year. Good luck with the citation building!
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the response!
So the only way the two business officially differentiate themselves is by the year they were established on their business licenses. For example, we're "ABC Company 1983 Ltd." and they are "ABC Company 1995 Ltd.". We tried changing the Google+ page to "ABC Company 1983 Ltd." and building citations with that name, but the problem is people only search for "ABC Company" and we're pretty behind compared to them in citations, anchor text links, etc. I guess the only thing we can do is keep our name without the date, and just out-build them. Thanks!
-
Hi Samuel!
That is an unusual situation (and kudos to Ryan for surfacing the Burger King story!). If, in your geography, Google is only showing one local result for a branded search (not a keyword search) then the client may be stuck. In some geographies, a branded search will show a pack of all nearby locations of that brand, but it sounds like in your client's scenario, Google is showing a local one-box or something like that. Unless the customer wants to re-brand, he is likely going to be stuck with this situation unless:
-
Google starts showing multiple results for the brand
-
He manages to completely surpass the competitor so that he becomes the #1 result
Right now, Google is likely thinking that both businesses are the same entity. I'm not quite sure what you mean about adding a date to the business name - please feel free to clarify that. If the client can't re-brand then the second option is really the only active thing he can pursue. You might like to check out the How To tab of this tutorial for using our Check Listing tool to identify weaker competitors:
-
-
It's definitely an odd situation! Any sort of differentiation you could use would help though: logo, tagline, business format (LLC, Inc, Canadian equivalent)... Personally a year wouldn't mean much to me if I was on the consumer side trying to figure out which one was which.
-
I'm not that Burger King... but maybe if I can get this figured out I'll reach out to them
So when our agency came aboard, we were definitely behind as far social media profiles, popular local citations, etc when compared to the competitor. And the majority of the profiles for the competitor have the name in its simplest (and most searched for) form. When we started we wanted to differentiate ourselves so we added the year established to all our citations, but I think we might just have to use the more common business name even if it conflicts with the competitor. Since we're not showing up in maps anyway, it's not like our local listing can get any worse...
-
You're not running Burger King in Matoon are ya? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Mattoon,_Illinois) -- a pretty good read about how the US has two Burger Kings...
That's definitely a tricky spot. Has the competitor already registered social media accounts in the company name as well? Is their domain a better match for the brand than your client's? Is the competitor active on social media matching the company name? Are both companies thoroughly listed on the sites you'd find in Moz Local (Yelp, YP, Foursquare, Google and Bing Local Business, etc.)? To get the map pin you'll really want to focus on the Name, Address, and Phone lining up on each service and ensure that Google has the verified business address as well. If there are big gaps in any of those things between your client and the competitor catching up should help move the needle.
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
-
Local Listing - Service Business with Three Areas Served
A client of mine owns a business that is a service (i.e. they do not have a storefront). They service three major markets - Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Nashville, TN. When talking to the Google My Business team, they said we needed to set up only one listing based on where we were headquartered (which is Atlanta) and then list that we service the other markets so that it shows in the listing. So we have one business listing set up as a service but headquartered in Atlanta and show the service area as Atlanta, Nashville and Charlotte. Does this seem correct? There is a lot of competition for them so looking to boost local search as much as possible. Thanks!
Local Listings | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Google Business - Adding location into business name
Hello, I've a client that has many services in different locations and addresses with the same website and phone number. But the thing is they want me to involve location name to business name. Is there a way to add and verify as bulk ?
Local Listings | | omeryamac0 -
Home-Based Business
Can a single business list multiple locations that are home-based? Will Google find this acceptable? More details. The business is a service based business that operates in two states. The owner has one approved Google My Business listing for her main location - her home in DE. She also has employees and stores supplies at her in-law's home in PA. Separate phone numbers are used for each business location. We have tried to create a Google My Business listing for the PA location and it has been rejected for quality reasons. We've asked clarification and received none. Is this worth pursing further or does it violate Google guidelines?
Local Listings | | DonnaDuncan2 -
How to handle Local SEO when two businesses merge
Hi, I have a landscaping client who is buying another company and merging the two companies together. I trying to figure what the best way to handle this type of situation is. Here are the specifics. Company A I've been working with him for a number of years, he has a really robust site with good content and with really good rankings. I've done a ton of citations, he's in good shape. His company has decent name recognition. Company B My client is buying Company B. Their site is really poor, no SEO done on site and no directory listing work. The company has great name recognition in the community and gets most clients through word of mouth. My client has decided to take Company B's name because its a more well known company. He is going to merge the companies, because he doesn't want to have 2 companies from a management standpoint. He plans to keep both physical locations open. So here are my questions. Do I keep both sites live for a period of time and put a message notifying people that "Company A is now Company B Name"? OR Do I transfer all the good content from Company A's site to Company B's site and do a 301 redirect of the URL. How should I handle the data aggregators and directory listings? I'm trying to keep all the great natural traffic that Company A gets to its site, start to build traffic around company B's location while following all of Google's policies. I could just start over and in the long-term they'd be fine, but I really love to find a strategy to avoid my client taking a big hit in organic traffic. Thanks in advance Mozzers!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb121 -
Why is the incorrect city name being appended to search results when that search is done from a completely different city? Screenshot Included
Hi Guys, This is weird. When searching "generator rentals" from within Vancouver/Lower Mainland and on a mobile device, our organic listing is ranked #1. That is the good news. The bad news is that for some reason the title returend is: Generator Rentals & Temporary Power Distribution - Edmonton". The "-Edmonton" is dynamically added, but I have no idea why. Edmonton is in a completely different province than Vancouver... over 720 miles apart. The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort conflict with our Google places account. You see, we do have an Edmonton branch. I have setup two branches... one for the Coquitlam/Vancouver branch and one for the Edmonton. And as far as I can tell, both are setup correctly. A screenshot from my iPhone has been linked (http://imgur.com/9YvyLDB). Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you, Jarrett 9YvyLDB
Local Listings | | TrinityPower0 -
2 Businesses + Same Address = Not a Problem?
Imagine someone who has 2 separate businesses with the same (home) address. Both are verified Google My Business G+ pages, each with its own separate website. Essentially the old business that is being de-emphasized is a guitar lesson teacher's studio. This G+ page is set as a storefront where people come to. The new business is similar, it is music lessons (private in-home instruction). This G+ page is set to have a service area - this goes along with their new business model. We all know that consistent NAP is essential BUT do you think these are competing against each other because they share an address even though the businesses are separate?
Local Listings | | Rich_Coffman0 -
International customers for local business
Hi I have a vacation rental in France. My customers come from the UK/US, France, and Spain and as such i have three domains. www.domain.com (French) en.domain.com (English) es.domain.com (Spanish) I first set up a Google+ page which was tied to my French website and it's descriptive text and KW are in French. I subsequently set-up 2 more Google+ pages (English and Spanish, each with their respective domains and language specific KW) for the purpose of showing up in local searches in the UK and Spain, which is starting to working. I'm I going in the right direction? is this a crazy idea since they all have the same local address? Thank you for sharing insights regarding how to handle a local business with multilingual customers.
Local Listings | | pgcosson0 -
'People Also Searched for' appears on some but not all local businesses, why? (Google Local Knowledge Panel)
I have a client who does not want the 'People Also Searched for' section on the Google Local Knowledge Panel to appear. I informed her that this is a standard part of the search presentation and that we cannot change. She then pointed out that the 'People also searched for' does not appear on her competitors' Google Local Knowledge Panels. (See the attachment for comparison) This raises a couple of questions: Why are the local businesses different? Can I change the content of her panel? I would appreciate any feedback. google-local.jpg
Local Listings | | sirgeorge0