Individual practitioner NAP - unique "N", repeated "AP" Help!
-
We have a business where we have a number of doctor's offices, and at each office there are a few individual doctors. Customers often search for either the overarching brand or the specific doctors. Our hope is to optimize our listings so that we can rank in local SEO for both the brand name and doctor names.
We have set up our local listings in Google My Business for all of the offices (common brand name, unique address, unique phone, unique landing page), but would like to explore adding individual doctor names in the listings too. The challenge is that each doctor within an office shares the address and phone number. They do have unique names (obviously) and landing pages, although the doctor landing pages don't have any specific contact information on them.
My understanding is that we should have unique phone numbers for each listing. Unfortunately, this is a management and IT maintenance challenge.
My question is - if we didn't use a unique phone number and instead used both the same address and phone number across multiple listings (office and doctors practicing there), are we violating Google's guidelines / damaging our overall rankings for all the listings? Does anyone have a sense of how bad this might be, so we can understand the risk/benefit?
And secondly, would we make things worse by adding the non-unique address/phone to the individual doctor pages? Would this just reinforce inconsistent NAP, right on our site?
Thanks!
-
Hey Robert!
Though I don't know the complete details of your scenario, you've done a good job providing some clues. Here is what I'd suggest:
-
These do sound like two distinct businesses. There is no obvious connection between a roofing contractor and a window washing company. So, good on this.
-
I am assuming the 2 companies are fully differentiated with different names, phone numbers, separate websites that don't interlink and totally unique content on the two websites. Any other approach would be problematic.
-
However, both of your business models are likely SABs (service area businesses) unless customers are actually visiting either company at the place of business. That seems unlikely for either a roofing contractor or a window washer. If both are SABs, you should be hiding the Google My Business listing address for both.
-
Providing you are doing everything in point #2 correctly, there is no reason not to include complete NAP on each website for the company. You don't need to hide the address on the website or on other citations. You only need to do that on Google, because it's their unique requirement.
Hope this helps and please let me know if you have any further questions!
-
-
Thanks for your response Miriam.
We have a similar situation in that a client operates multiple business out of the same location (a roofing company and window cleaning service). Each business has a unique name and phone number. We currently have the primary business (roofing contractor) set up to "show" the address and the secondary business (window cleaning) we have chosen to hide the address and set a service area for all local directories.
I have tried to find information on best practices for this specific situation but all resources seem to focus on business with multiple locations rather than multiple business at a singular location. So, I m not sure how to best approach these situations in regards to local directories.
You'd have to imagine someone has some insight into this as "shared" office spaces are gaining in popularity.
-
Great question! Unless each doctor has his/her own phone number, then I would strongly advise against creating Google My Business listings for them. You've done a 100% excellent job up to this point of keeping your locations separate with unique phone numbers and unique landing pages. If you then begin to degrade NAP clarity by creating a whole bunch of new listings that share the practices' phone numbers, you will be dimming that clarity and putting the listings at risk for merging and potential ranking issues.
Is it a guideline violation for practitioner to share a phone number with the practice. Technically, it isn't, as the guidelines read:
Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible
So, Google is speaking specifically about locations here, rather than practitioners. They aren't stating that practitioners HAVE TO have a unique phone number, but later on in the guidelines, they do state this about them:
He or she is directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours
So, one can sagely infer from this that Google wants a person rather than a call center to answer the practitioner's phone number if called, but Google really doesn't spell this out in terms that are as black-and-white as I'd like.
Nevertheless, whether it's a guideline violation or not to share phone numbers, it's not a best practice, given the problems it can cause, so, unless the doctors are willing to have unique phone numbers at which they can be contacted directly, I wouldn't advise creating GMB listings for them.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Is having two websites with the same NAP equal to the local search visibility issues?
My company works in two directions: printing and website design / development. I have one website for both printing and website development but it doesn’t have “printing” in domain name (velvdesign.com) I would like to rank higher for printing related keywords. Do you think I should have two separate websites, one for printing (velvprinting.com), another for website design /development (velvdesign.com)? If yes, am I going to get into NAP’s issue because my company has only one location? I can get the second phone number to improve local search visibility. Thank you very much in advance for your time!
Local Listings | | VELV0 -
Should Medical Practices Build Citations For Each Practitioner?
I'm working with a medical practice that has 6 doctors in a single office location. We already have GMB pages for the practice as a whole as well as each practitioner. Should multi-practitioner businesses like medical practices build citations for each practitioner as well? For instance, should each doctor have a listing on YellowPages, Localeze, etc?
Local Listings | | formandfunctionagency1 -
Call Rail and NAP
Hello- My company has multiple physical locations, but one central toll free admissions line. We have CallRail to track where calls are coming from, however, I am nervous about the dynamic tracking numbers and how I approach NAP. Even if I set up a different toll free number for each of our 9 locations (which would ultimately route to one toll free number), how would I track where the calls were coming from (GMB, website, facebook, etc) without adding more dynamic tracking numbers? We've had calls with CallRail reps, but no one can give us an explanation. My question is how exactly do I approach CallRail with multiple locations and one main toll-free number to make sure we don't mess up NAP? Are there any CallRail experts out there that can tell me exactly what to do in our specific situation? Thank you so much in advance!
Local Listings | | lfrazer1230 -
Google My Business - What is the best way to remove "Duplicate Address"? Help!
Google can be such a pain with managing listings - especially when you are an agency managing a client's listing! I am hoping someone can help with this... How do I permanently delete a “duplicate address?” In the Google My Business dashboard (classic view), under account summary – I click duplicate locations. From here, I can easily remove a duplicate location - that is not the issue. The issue is for duplicate addresses. For this, we only have the option to resolve address, which directs you to the business’ location details. Our options are then to: 1. Change the business NAP 2. Permanently close location 3. Remove the listing from your dashboard (removing it from dashboard doesn’t delete it from Google). We edited the business’ name, phone number, address and website – to try and make it a duplicate location, because if we are able to make it a duplicate location then we know we will have the option to **Remove Duplicate. **Nothing has changed though. We don't want to mark this as a permanently closed location because if somebody does come across the listing down the road it is going to be misleading. The business is not actually closed! Any insight would be very much appreciated. Thank you!
Local Listings | | bcallegary0 -
How do I rank inside the knowledge panel in the "people also search for" section?
Hello fellow Mozzers, In Google's knowledge panel there is a section at the bottom that says "people also search for" and a list of competitors is displayed. I'm hoping to get some information I can use to get my client listed there on top of the local organic results. The more SERP presence, the better. Attached image should provide clarity to those who are confused. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but since I can't find a source to verify my beliefs, I'm crowdsourcing. Thanks in advance! NhoihY1
Local Listings | | brettmandoes0 -
"Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing
For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC). Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it). Both listings are at the same address. Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true? Would Google penalize us for this? I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!!
Local Listings | | bpurdue0 -
Local Help! Google+ Accounts for New Brand & Service Sites
Hi Mozzers! I have a lot of knowledge in local search, G+ page setup/optimization, etc, etc... However, I'm about to begin a business based around "home services". The brand will be ABC Home Services as the umbrella. Then under it will be the individual services like "ABC Carpet Cleaning" "ABC Roofing", etc... Each service will have it's own website for optimization purposes and local search authority building as well as the services will be developed over the course of a couple years ie: carpet cleaning would go up 1st, then the next service and so on... I have purchased all of the domains I want for the services to focus on. What do you recommend I do in terms of setting up Gmail accounts/G+ accounts? Individual service related Gmail accounts and have a main "ABC Home Services" Google account and then add in the service G+ pages over time? I'm open to any questions, but trying to make this the most efficient for me and my team and also the best if can be for local optimization goals and criteria. Thank you! - Patrick
Local Listings | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
2 listings on Google Local....Need Help!
Hi All, One of our client have 2 business listings on Google Local for same business (same NAP but different website). Actually, their first website was under Google Penalty. They tried to remove the penalty but could not get rid of it so they bought a new domain and started working on it and listed the same business with new website URL. Now, their business is having 2 listings but with different URLs. How can we merge these two? Please advice. Thanks in Advance.
Local Listings | | sachin-sv0