Hi Varun,

You can put your complete NAP (name, address, phone) on every page, but most typically, local business websites put this in two major places: the sitewide website footer and the Contact Us page. It can also be a good idea to have it in the site masthead to help visitors instantly know that your business is local to them. I would only put it on the rest of the pages of the website if it made sense to do so. It certainly won't hurt you if you want to put it on every page, but I don't think it will be of more help than simply having it in the places I've specified, above.

Hi Silhouette,

If I'm understanding this correctly, your client has

1. Two business names (for example, Red Rock Dental Clinic and Green Tree Dental Center)

2. These two locations are in the same city, but have COMPLETELY different addresses AND phone numbers (let me know if the phone numbers are the same)

3. Completely different dentists and staff at the two offices (if not, let me know)

4. A single website representing both businesses.

If the above is correct, the dentist has two options.

1. Bring their branding into a state of cohesion so that their dental practice has just one name. Then, you would simply create 2 landing pages on the website - one for each of the location, and include the complete NAP of both in the footer and on the contact page. If they go this route, your job will be to do a citation cleanup campaign to edit all mentions of their business on the web so that the single, chosen business name is properly associated with both locations.

2. If they have to keep both names for some reason, then I would recommend that they develop a completely separate website for one of the locations. Here's why: the core signal a local business sends to the search engines is comprised of its name+address+phone number+website. If the client maintains 2 names, they are sending a very confusing signal to the bots that both Red Rock Dental Clinic and Green Tree Dental Center are the business' name. Imagine the bots hitting the website and say, "Wait, what is the name of this business???".  This could lead to a number of problems including citation inconsistency, merged listings, duplicate listings and ranking failures. So, if they must keep the 2 names, I suggest they separate them completely with two different websites. Note, in this case the NAP must be completely separate (the phone number cannot be the same for the two different addresses). And, the content would need to be completely different on the two different websites.

Either route would be fine, but their current scenario is not, in my opinion, okay. Having two different businesses share the same website just isn't something I would ever recommend to any local business owner, even if he owns the two businesses. Upshot: they need to solidify their branding or expand their marketing with the development of a second, unique website.

Hope this helps!

Greetings VernonMack, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. Your question is a good one and, happily, the answer here is simple. You need to use whatever your legal business name is. If your DBA uses ampersand, then consistently use this to describe your business on your website, local listings and elsewhere. If it uses and, then use that. Be consistent and you will be fine.

Hi Beehive,

This is a good question. So, as I understand it, you originally had a city-specific domain name when you were a single location business. You now have six locations and have moved to a purely branded domain rather than a city-specific one and this site has a unique page for each of your locations (which is good - a best practice - provided the content is unique on each page).

I would not recommend putting all six city names in your homepage title tag or in the title tag of any other page. Once a business expands like yours has, you've got to come up with a different strategy than the one you were using for a single location.

Questions:

Did you 301 redirect the old domain to the new one?

Did you update all of your citations to reflect the new domain name? Realize this will take time to go into effect. This is very important.

Suggestions:

You might like to read this post about local landing pages: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Study the part about Business Model III in the above guide, if you've not already read it. It applies to your business model.

A multi-location local business that I think is doing a good job with their Local SEO is REI.com. Check out their location landing pages.

You must now start building the authority for each of the 5 new locations, with content development, citation building, review acquisition, social outreach, etc.

I hope some of these thoughts will be helpful to you.

Good for you, Silhouette! You've advised the client well. It will be important as you move forward to make sure that the original site no longer references the second location, and then there will be citation cleanup, etc. And be sure you are not duplicating text on the two sites. These need to be two totally distinct websites. Glad to hear the client was willing to see the light of day on this. Way to go!

Great discussion here with many excellent points covered by everyone who has responded. I will only add, because I think this is something that may come up frequently, Google's new Keyword Planner Tool only changes the way you might do keyword research - not the way you optimize a site. It is still vital to locally optimize the website. The only difference is that you hopefully now have more and better insight into important terms to include in your optimization.

Hi Silhouette,

If this was my client and they wouldn't bring their branding into cohesion, nor build a second website, I honestly wouldn't know how to advise them. Their desire to promote two differently branded businesses on the same local website is a recipe for all kinds of trouble, as we've discussed, so there wouldn't be some 'right' way to do what you're asking about. I would tell the client that they will likely end up with a mess on their hands in their citations and ranking failures and that I couldn't work with them if they weren't going to take my advice about this. Remember, this client has hired you because of your ability to advise them. If they won't take the advice, your hands are tied. I'd have a last conversation with them and then, if they couldn't respect the fact that they've hired me for my expertise in this matter, I would drop them. Clients who can't take advice are not good clients.

If there is some kind of problem with funding that is preventing them from immediately building a new website, you could offer to give them 3 months or whatever to accrue this funding, during which time you will do nothing. Don't build any citations for either business or do anything social. Then, when they've got the necessary funding, you could build out the second website, do a thorough citation cleanup campaign and then begin building new citations as needed.

I understand, it can be so frustrating to encounter businesses like this who, because of their thinking, are on the road to potential disaster. But you can't force them to let you help them. If they won't listen, they are kind of setting themselves up to learn from experience. If you drop them now, explaining the reasons why you are doing so, you may very well hear back from them in six months when they realize their results are all messed up.

Hope this helps!

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the list of ampersand brands! Fun.

The thing about this that is odd to me, from a local perspective, is that I know Google can surface a onebox/knowledge graph for law firms with both the ampersand and non-ampersand versions of their names. I've seen it. This may all boil down to authority or a lack thereof. Interesting.

Hi Paul,

Sometimes, you will get an automated response before action takes place. However, if a month has gone by, I would go the Google And Your Business Forum and report the entire issue, including your report to the troubleshooter. See if a TC will take interest in your plight and escalate for you.