Best Approach for GMB/Local Optimization for Central Office with Multiple Locations

[Ben-R]

Hello,

Our site is designed to place people in different locations or houses. We have six locations total; each one has its own name, physical address and landing page. We also have a central office for the brand with its own NAP.

All addresses fall under the guidelines of Google My Business (i.e. people visit each location and our office...etc.).

Unless it’s ideal, we most likely wouldn’t be running a full-scale local campaign for each location due to restrictions on resources and wouldn’t want to spread ourselves too thin.

Our question is; would it be best to set up a GMB listing for each location including our central office, only use the central office or just the 6 locations? – We know multiple locations is not an issue for GMB but we weren’t sure if that’s the ideal way to approach it in this case.

Essentially, would it be better to focus on our central office for GMB/local efforts and just make sure that our other location landing pages are the highest quality possible or better to use GMB for every location (including the main office) and over time start local work on all of the above.

Also, if we do only use just the central office; should we be avoiding listing the other addresses on each landing page to avoid confusing Google as to where we are located?

Any help or insight on how to approach this would be very much appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you!

Thank you.

Best,

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ben,

You're welcome! Good follow-up question.

If your company (XYZ) places patients in facilities you don't own (Sunshine), then you aren't authorized to create GMB listings for Sunshine. Nor would any other service that places patients in those facilities. Sunshine would need to market themselves as the owner of that location.

Hope that makes sense.

[Ben-R]

Thank you very much for your fantastic answer. Regarding number 2; if the homes ‘don’t belong to the brand’ would each one need to be marketed independently and just not associated with our brand name? – Curious on what it would change.

I’m assuming from a practical standpoint it would be a similar answer though (i.e. budget providing, starting with the central office and then moving on to the next ones, just in this case separate from mentioning the brand).

Thanks again for the help!

Best,

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ben,

Thank you for the additional details. So, I'm seeing a couple of factors at play here that are important to your ultimate decision making.

1. If your resources are too spare right now to market 6 locations + home office, then, yes, just go with the home office and then begin marketing your other locations as budget becomes available.

2. But, ideally, you would want to market all of your locations  - if - and this is an important "if" - each of these locations genuinely belongs to the business. So if you are XYZ Rehabilitation Center, these locations must also be XYZ Rehabilitation Center. This cannot be your XYZ brand placing people at Sunshine Rehabilitation Center and then marketing Sunshine as if it were your own. So, provided all locations are branded with your brand, then yes, you'd want to market them all.

You're right that you want to strive for brand recognition and want people searching for "XYZ" to find and recognize your brand on the web. But, many people won't be searching for your brand. They'll be searching for something like "drug addiction treatment center San Diego". If one of your facilities (not your home office) is located in San Diego, you want these customers to find it. And, so, you need to market it. That's the basic rationale behind all this.

So, if you have the budget, market everything. If your budget is tight, do it one location at a time. Good luck!

[DmitriiK]

Go with local locations. You can append or prepend brand name to the locations names. "Pete's Place - Brand Name". Because folks would want to go to the closest place, not to the central office.

[Ben-R]

Thank you both for the help; it’s very much appreciated.

It might be a similar principle as a real estate firm, but our business helps place people with addictions into different treatment homes in the area. While each home has its own name, address and landing page, we have a central office for the brand.

Our thought was because it’s less likely for people to search for the individual addresses and people would be more inclined to recognize the brand it might make more sense to just use the central office. But we weren’t sure if that’s the best approach or if it is, how best to handle mentioning the address on each landing page.

If there are any other details we could provide that might help just let us know.

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ben!

May I ask for a little more clarity regarding your business description "Our site is designed to place people in different locations or houses".

Are you a real estate firm? Something else?

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Think of it from the user's perspective. Does your product/service "require" brick and mortar location? Would people be more likely to buy from you if they can visit (or even just see online) local physical location? Or does it all just kinda forwards to central office and those local offices are more for show?

If having local offices are beneficial to users, therefore it will be beneficial to your business, therefore go ahead and have GMB for all of them. If not, then just GMB for central location.