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
-
GOOGLE SERP HELP
hey guys - a new member here, and huge issue i can't seem to wrap my head around where i could really use yalls help! I oversee about a couple firemen in my local neighborhood - however the issue lies in this: Lets say theres 50 firmen total if i look up lets say his name is 'john james fireman' on google then him and his GMB appears - great awesome, right?
Local Listings | | Johndavisx
Well then, if I search a second employee lets say her name is jill jansen and i look up 'Jill Jansen fireman' what happens is that john james GMB appears when i search her name then lets say i search another employee - calling him "jake bo" - if i look up "jake bo fireman" john james GMB STILL shows up - even though no where are there names related THEN the confusing part is that he only appears for select employees, not all of them. I don't know if this a metatagging issue, i went through his content seo and nothing seems to trigger it, so im at a loss - Any help would be greatly appreciated1 -
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 -
"Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing
For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC). Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it). Both listings are at the same address. Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true? Would Google penalize us for this? I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!!
Local Listings | | bpurdue0 -
SEO - Should individual doctors at facility claim a Google My Business profile?
My client is a physician facility with several doctors practicing at the facility. When doing a Google search for some of their practices such as "family practice" one of the doctor's profiles will display in the Google Local pack - however it is not linked to the facility website where their profile exists. As of right now, we are using YEXT and other tools to claim Google Business Profiles for each practice, not the individual doctors. If there are unclaimed accounts for individual doctors, they are alerting Google that it’s a duplicate and should be taken down. Is this the right process to follow for SEO best practices or should we be claiming both the business and individual doctor profiles? The reason they are not claiming individual doctor profiles is to cut down on duplicate reviews as part of the Reputation Management Program. Advice much appreciated!
Local Listings | | chrisvogel0 -
1 company, 2 shop locations, 3 Google+ pages - help!
Hello, I work for a furniture retailer and I'm doing an audit of our digital presence and need a hand with our G+ pages. Thanks for reading! We are one company but with two shops, located about 10 miles apart. One shop has been established over 10 years, the other is roughly a year old. The shops are called: 'Our Company' and 'Our Company, Second Location' Each shop has its own website (which is confusing and we'll hopefully shortly revert back to just one) We currently have three Google+ profiles: the first G+ was set up a number of years ago and was set up as a personal page, not a business and it links to both shop's websites. The other two G+ pages appear to have been created when we created a Google Local listing for each shop. My questions are: What is the best tool to handle all this info across the web? Bright Local looks good. Should I junk the original G+ profile? If I do, how will I know I won't remove any important stuff from Google? Should I keep 2 G+ profiles, one for each store or have 1 G+ profile and put both store's details in there. Or should I have 3 G+ profiles: 1 for our company name, and 1 for each of our 2 locations? When I search for 'Our Company', I only ever get our original company to show in the Google Local listing on the right hand side of search results. Our second shop is shown in 'People also search for'. Is this the best I can hope for? Is there any way to control this? Both of the G+ profiles that are linked to our Google Local listings have the original G+ URL. Should I customise this and if so, are there any naming conventions I should follow? What should we do with the (2?) G+ profiles for each shop? Both have currently got no content on them. Thanks in advance for any tips and advice.
Local Listings | | Bee1590 -
2 listings on Google Local....Need Help!
Hi All, One of our client have 2 business listings on Google Local for same business (same NAP but different website). Actually, their first website was under Google Penalty. They tried to remove the penalty but could not get rid of it so they bought a new domain and started working on it and listed the same business with new website URL. Now, their business is having 2 listings but with different URLs. How can we merge these two? Please advice. Thanks in Advance.
Local Listings | | sachin-sv0 -
Google+ Company Verification Help
I am in a huge Google+ pickle. Backstory: Client's past marketing manager set up a Google+ Company Page with their old work email as the username - that marketing manager is now gone Client also moved into a new unit within their building, therefor keeping the same address but a different suite # Client's President (my point of contact) created a new (unverified) Google+ Company Page for the new address & suite # If I verify the correct Google+ Company Page, does this overwrite the old one with the incorrect suite #? Or will I still need to dig up their old company page login to transfer ownership? Also, does anyone have any helpful beginner articles on setting up Google+ Company Pages for businesses with multiple locations? Thanks!
Local Listings | | BopDesign0