Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO Tasks When Closing One Branch of Multilocation Business
-
I would appreciate the opinions of my fellow SEOs on this one. I haven’t seen any other threads on this exact subject and others that touch on it are somewhat older so I am hoping this also proves to be a good resource for others going forward.
I have an existing client that I did local SEO for about a year ago. They are a propane service provider and they had multiple locations. So we did local SEO for the company primarily by updating NAPs and creating more individual content for each of the branches such as specific landing page for each branch on their website and individual listings in citations for each branch.
Now they have sold one of the branches to a competitor and they need to remove all listings for it. I am trying to develop a comprehensive list of actions to take and I would appreciate any feedback on the best way to go about accomplishing this task.
Here is what I have so far:
- Remove all mention of sold branch on client website, including specific landing page
- Delete any branch-specific social media accounts
Some specific areas I have questions about are:
- What do I do with Google My Business listings for the sold branch? Do I try to delete/unregister/close them? Or should I just leave them be with an updated link to our website homepage?
- Should I even bother contacting the main NAP listing sites to remove the old listing or just leave it to fall off on its own?
Thank you again for all your help!
-
Hi Dominick!
Good for you for being thorough about this. In answer to your 2 questions:
-
As the business is genuinely being closed at this location and is not moving to a new location, you'll just want to follow Google's recommendations for reporting the business as closed: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6314541?hl=en&ref_topic=4854191
-
Yes, you should follow up with closing out as many other citations that pertained to the business as possible. Why? For a couple of reasons, including not wanting the other offices to have to field calls from unhappy customers who are seeking the closed business in vain, and also, because you never really want stray, inaccurate NAP floating around out there in the ecosystem for any business. So, yes, I vote for closing out the old references.
Hope these replies help!
-
-
I've never personally tested this so I can't say what would happen if you just left everything to fall away over time but I prefer to be proactive with this sort of thing.
If these branches are essentially just a retail shop front then I'd lean toward closing that branch (in GMB) and having the other instances of that particular NAP removed too.
It's basically just a bit of housekeeping - you don't really want people to be coming across one of our branches that no longer exists and since you created these listings, it shouldn't be hard or time-consuming to remove them.
The only other step I'd suggest here is to Google the terms you think are likely to show that branch. Search for the company name and location and skim through the results to make sure you haven't missed anything out. You may even come across something like a genuine comment on some obscure forum referencing that branch.
Since you can't exactly have that comment deleted, you could always create an account and drop a comment in there saying that branch is unfortunately closed but there is a branch at [nearest location]. At least then anyone reading that thread in the future has an alternative.
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
-
Seasonal Setting Options for Google My Business
Hi there, Not sure if anyone will have any insight but I have a seasonal business that I am closed for from September to March. I don't want to mark my business as "permanently closed" through Google My Business as I don't want my customers to think I've gone out of business. I've seen a few times through forums that you can change your business to temporarily closed, but I can't find the specifics on how to do this. Any insight, suggestion or resources would be great! Thanks!
Local Listings | | MainstreamMktg1 -
GMB best practice for chiropractic office (individual vs. business pages)
For a chiropractic or other doctor's office with multiple doctors, should each have their own personal Google My Business page page AND a business page for the practice? If they just have a business page now, is it worth creating a page for each of the individual doctors? And what if some of them have different focuses (like a acupuncturist and chiropractor), does that mean you should make individual doctor pages when you otherwise wouldn't bother? And IF we should create pages for the individual doctors, should they all have the same address and website since they work in the same practice. Curious if there is a best practice for this... has anyone seen positive or negative results with or without the individual doctor pages? Thanks!
Local Listings | | Mike-i0 -
Google My Business - two locations but same name and phone
Hello, I manage SEO for an orthopaedic practice and I'm wondering what to do about their GMB listings. They have two locations, but I'm starting to think we shouldn't have separate GMB pages for the two locations because of the advice about other GMB questions I've been reading on this forum. I read a helpful response that said you must ensure the following if you want to create separate GMB listings: Unique name Unique address (even if only a suite / office number) Unique phone number Clearly different categories on Google My Business I can only ensure one of those - unique address. The business has the same name, phone number, and categories at both addresses. What should I do about this? I would think it's important to list both addresses so that patients can be guided to the appropriate location, but is there a way to do that with just one GMB listing? Thank you, Susannah
Local Listings | | SusannahK.Noel0 -
Do You Know What's Triggering Your Local Packs?
Hey To All My Local Pals, Here 🙂 Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals. Mike says, _"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _ Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors. In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs? I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis9 -
Are Yellow Pages links good for SEO
I have a client that has 2500 yellowpages.com links like this one http://m.yellowpages.com/hillside-nj/guardianship-services Are these SEO relevant? Can they hurt SEO efforts. Is this something should push for clients? Can Yellow pages be a good link building strategy? What say you?
Local Listings | | donsilvernail0 -
Two businesses - using separate suite numbers
I have a client that has an office in a particular suite (Suite 101) at a local address. They rent the space so they cannot just add another suite number. They are going to have two websites for two different businesses run from the same location. They will have separate local phone numbers for each business. Is it too much of a stretch for them to show one as "Suite 101-A" and the other as "Suite 101-B" for their local pages? One of the businesses is very new with few citations at this point. The other has not started up yet, so we have better control of the citations that will be created. I've seen similar questions posted, but not one that addresses this specific issue. Thanks for any advice!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
How To Change Image Used In Business Knowledge Graph...
How can one change the image that Google shows in a business' knowledge graph in the SERPs? And the image I am referring to is the one that typically appears to the left of the map within the knowledge graph box, above the business' name. The current image that is being used in my client's case is an image that was uploaded in their Google+ My Business profile, but there doesn't appear to be any particular reason why that one was chosen (it wasn't the first or last image uploaded, nor is it selected as the profile picture). As user-interaction increasingly becomes important in rankings, I would like to change this to something more attractive. Thank you for any help and guidance!
Local Listings | | gbkevin1 -
Bing Places for Business - Worth It?
Hey Fellow Mozzers, I am trying to determine if Bing Places for Business is worth the time and effort it takes to create listings. My business has 900 locations, and would take some time to create the bulk upload file to load into the Bing Places for Business dashboard. My question is, since Bing already does a good job of creating business listings using data from 3rd party sources such as Yelp and Citysearch, where I already have a strong presence for each of my locations, is there any value in overriding the automatically created business page for each of my location with information that I upload?
Local Listings | | dsinger2