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!
-
Hey Robert!
Though I don't know the complete details of your scenario, you've done a good job providing some clues. Here is what I'd suggest:
-
These do sound like two distinct businesses. There is no obvious connection between a roofing contractor and a window washing company. So, good on this.
-
I am assuming the 2 companies are fully differentiated with different names, phone numbers, separate websites that don't interlink and totally unique content on the two websites. Any other approach would be problematic.
-
However, both of your business models are likely SABs (service area businesses) unless customers are actually visiting either company at the place of business. That seems unlikely for either a roofing contractor or a window washer. If both are SABs, you should be hiding the Google My Business listing address for both.
-
Providing you are doing everything in point #2 correctly, there is no reason not to include complete NAP on each website for the company. You don't need to hide the address on the website or on other citations. You only need to do that on Google, because it's their unique requirement.
Hope this helps and please let me know if you have any further questions!
-
-
Thanks for your response Miriam.
We have a similar situation in that a client operates multiple business out of the same location (a roofing company and window cleaning service). Each business has a unique name and phone number. We currently have the primary business (roofing contractor) set up to "show" the address and the secondary business (window cleaning) we have chosen to hide the address and set a service area for all local directories.
I have tried to find information on best practices for this specific situation but all resources seem to focus on business with multiple locations rather than multiple business at a singular location. So, I m not sure how to best approach these situations in regards to local directories.
You'd have to imagine someone has some insight into this as "shared" office spaces are gaining in popularity.
-
Great question! Unless each doctor has his/her own phone number, then I would strongly advise against creating Google My Business listings for them. You've done a 100% excellent job up to this point of keeping your locations separate with unique phone numbers and unique landing pages. If you then begin to degrade NAP clarity by creating a whole bunch of new listings that share the practices' phone numbers, you will be dimming that clarity and putting the listings at risk for merging and potential ranking issues.
Is it a guideline violation for practitioner to share a phone number with the practice. Technically, it isn't, as the guidelines read:
Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible
So, Google is speaking specifically about locations here, rather than practitioners. They aren't stating that practitioners HAVE TO have a unique phone number, but later on in the guidelines, they do state this about them:
He or she is directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours
So, one can sagely infer from this that Google wants a person rather than a call center to answer the practitioner's phone number if called, but Google really doesn't spell this out in terms that are as black-and-white as I'd like.
Nevertheless, whether it's a guideline violation or not to share phone numbers, it's not a best practice, given the problems it can cause, so, unless the doctors are willing to have unique phone numbers at which they can be contacted directly, I wouldn't advise creating GMB listings for them.
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 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?
Local Listings | | elisa175910 -
HELP! Google Local dropped!
I noticed that my Google Local page does not show in any search results anymore. Looking at Moz Local, it appears that I had 250 views on August 30th and 0 after that. It just dropped overnight. I looked at Google My Business and I noticed that I had a duplicate listing (no idea where it came from). It wasn't verified though. I deleted that. I also noticed that my address has been changed to Drive instead Dr. I was very careful in making it the same everywhere, but it changed without me changing it. Perhaps someone so kindly "suggested an edit" and I didn't see that happen. Anyone have any ideas. My organic search ranking is still strong. #3 for most search terms. And we have a very strong Google Local reviews. I mean, it even shows business that have been permanently closed over me!!! And we have photos, great reviews, and regularly post to Google+. I seriously need some help. I am a small business owner that does all of my own SEO because I can't afford a good SEO. 😞
Local Listings | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Client Being Outranked by Horrible Websites with No SEO--Help!
Hi guys, We have a client that we are having some issues with. We have done extensive directory work for them, website enhancements, etc. so this is unusual. Hermantown is an extremely small city in MN so companies there normally target Duluth. Our client is hardly ranking locally in Google maps or organically yet their competitors are showing up who have horrible websites, no SEO, and located in the same city—Hermantown yet showing up locally for Duluth searches. We just can’t seem to move up the ladder no matter how hard we try. Here is the company: www.mmtheating.com We are completely at a loss for next steps on how to help this client improve. We’re wondering if there may be a penalty against them for some reason but we always have had very ethical practices. Thanks in advance for your insights!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
Local Business Audit Help.....
Hello Every one, I recently got a big project for cleaning up some old listings (around 120 locations), witch means to claim and delete them, as you guys know most of the directory's don't give the option to delete the listing after you claim that. I am trying to figure out the approach for something like that.......considering time consuming and efficiency! any help will be appreciated!! Cheers
Local Listings | | steve2150 -
Help with Google+ business name rules
I'm marketing a franchise gym business that has multiple locations within the same city. For the business name, I used to have it set as "Business Name" + City + Tagline. For example: "Ultimate Workout South Calgary Gym and Bootcamps". and "Ultimate Workout North Calgary Gym and Bootcamps". To comply with the google business naming rules I've updated all the listing to just business name. The problem is, now the local search results for my gym locations are confusing. Half the address is cut off in the results, the city is not displayed at all. And sometimes results from a neighbouring city are shown. Anyone have an idea on how to implement a strategy where people at a quick glance understand which location is best for them?
Local Listings | | John-Ray0 -
Help with Google Places, local listings & Google+ please!
Hi all, I work for enterprise app development & mobile consultancy, Mubaloo. I recently asked a question around getting better rankings for London-based search results. One answer was to set up a local listing for Mubaloo's London office. I thought I had done by setting up our London office up on Places for Business - is this the same as a local listing? In addition to this, I can't connect our existing Google+ page to our local Mubaloo Bristol & London listings as Google has created separate pages for each! Is anyone else having this issue? Can it be resolved?
Local Listings | | donaldsze0 -
NAPtastic: Google updated G+ page to "correct" street spelling, but not Maps
A client's G+ page updated from "Jimmy" to "Jimmie" Rd. The change is technically correct according to the legal county road name, though the Places, G+, and indeed even the printed inscription on the Google map itself all say "Jimmy." So, too, does virtually all of the NAP instances around the web. Question - should we update Business Registration Managers with the updated address info and assume the Google change will also eventually filter to other Google assets, or make no changes? Weird, right? Here's the Place: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Georgia+Square+Collision/@33.9357517,-83.4885575,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x57927ad08d139333 Thanks!
Local Listings | | PerfectPitchConcepts0 -
Google Maps Help
Hello, I'm helping 2 clients with Google Maps Client 1
Local Listings | | ogdcorp
Has 4 Locations, I claimed all 4 but when searching his name only 3 are showing up on the first page.
All 4 show up when clicking on "More results" Client 2
Has 3 Locations, all of them were claimed by another company 1 year ago. But now I cant re-claim them unless the other company releases them but that wont be easy. Any suggestions? Also, when dealing with multiple locations is it better to have 1 email address for all or 1 email for each? Thanks0