Google My Business - two locations but same name and phone

[SusannahK.Noel]

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

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jepaul4,

Thanks for asking your question. As long as the address and phone number for each location of your business is unique, do not worry about the name being the same. Google understands that a brand like McDonald's has thousands of locations with the same name at different addresses, and they will not consider your listings duplicates if they share a name but have different addresses and phone numbers, too. Hope this helps!

[jepaul4]

I have two different listings. All the things were different e.g. name, address, phone number. The name of one listing was "Fobtoronto" and other "FobToronto north york".

After reading google guidelines I changed the name of the listing FobToronto north york to "FobToronto".

Now the name of these two listings is the same. How will I make citations for both of them because of the same name?

Will Google consider my citations duplicated?

[MiriamEllis]

It's my very great pleasure!

[SusannahK.Noel]

Okay, very good to know. Thanks again for your excellent help!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Susannah,

You're very welcome! Until the client can get a separate phone number for Location B, don't create the GMB listing or any other citations for it. Hopefully, you can share Google's guidelines with them and help them see the good sense in complying with Google's wishes on this. In addition to being guideline compliant, unique phone numbers greatly lessen the risk of accidental listing merges, so pretty much any multi-location business needs to make a basic investment in a unique number for each locale.

[SusannahK.Noel]

Thank you so much, Miriam! This is hugely helpful.

I'll check with my client to see if they do have a separate phone number for the two locations. It's possible they do and I just don't realize it. If they don't, do you have any suggestions for what we can do?

Susannah

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Susannah,

Google My Business listings relate entirely to physical locations. So, if you have 2 physical locations, you are eligible for 2 GMB listings. However, the practice should definitely assign a unique phone number to the second location, as Google wants the number you list to connect as directly as possible to the location.

Having the same business name is no problem at all, and, in fact, you should not add any modifying keywords to either name (like a city name). List the name exactly as it appears in the real business world for both listings.

Finally, in regards to web pages: it's ideal to create a unique landing page on the website for each of the physical locations. So, the GMB listing for Location A would link to the landing page on the company site for Location A, and the GMB listing for Location B would link to the landing page on the site for Location B. Location landing pages represent very powerful opportunities to target content to a specific set of users. Make the content unique and as helpful as possible, and don't forget to put the name, address and phone of the business at the top of its respective landing page. Finally, be sure the citation set you build for Location A links to landing page A, and the same goes for Location B.

You can read more about landing pages here on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hope this helps!