Local SEO Tasks When Closing One Branch of Multilocation Business

[Ayres-SEO]

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!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Dominick!

Good for you for being thorough about this. In answer to your 2 questions:

1. 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

2. 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!

[ChrisAshton]

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.