No Appearance in Local pack - group practice favored
-
Hi,
One client has a website, Google My Business etc of his own. He ranks ok to good locally for search terms.
However, his entry simply won't show up within the local n-pack (where it objectively should) and also does not appear in the map. It seems to me that instead a group practice with a colleague that has both their names in its name/title. (Moreover, it is in the same spot - they decided to go with different websites and entries of their own, though.) For some reason, this practice is also connected to the ranking website of our client.
I suppose (NAP problems and previously used phone tracking numbers aside) that this group practice essentially blocks the real client-entry from appearing. Has anybody made such experiences?
(My provisional ToDo would look like: Disconnect the group practice from the client's website; erase/merge it if possible; do proper LocalSEO otherwise.)
Regards
Nico
-
Hey Nico,
Hate to say it, but this sounds like a serious mess. If there are multiple websites sharing partial or complete NAP and phone numbers being held hostage by third parties, I think:
-
You need a formal audit from a heavy-hitting Local SEO agency to find all of the problems.
-
Even with that, unless you have the authority and green light to launch a massive cleanup, involving all doctors and the practice, your hands may be tied here.
This is one of those really difficult situations one sometimes wades into without realizing the depth of the pool. What you are describing sounds like a very large project, but a good agency can tackle large projects methodically, one step at a time. What is the real concern here is the mention of legal problems and phone numbers being held hostage. There's not going to be a simple solution for this, and it may be that the company needs to work out its internal matters before any SEO team can help them
-
-
Hi,
Thanks for your valuable advice! I fear, due to factors outside my influence, it is a little more complicated.
- AFAIK the group practice still exists ... at least technically.
- It does have a website with a (very) good and fitting domain name that is slightly more than a placeholder.
- Its G+ Page is basically empty.
- There is a Facebook Page for the group practice.
- There is legal dispute(!) about the ownership of the domain and in connection with the group practice. Unfortunately, this limits my actions quite strongly.
- Both their practices are still part of the same Clinic. (Before, they shared a practice at a different location.) The clinic is not important for me.
- The telephone number listed with the group practice goes to the other doctor. I assume that this is a major point of trouble - as above, I probably have currently no way to influence this.
- So: Is there anything I can do if telephone numbers ARE wrong but lead to somebody who has no interest in surrendering those phone numbers or having the entries changed?
- (a former duplicate GMB entry for the client has already been resolved)
- sameAs: thanks for the reminder! I indeed forgot this tiny bit when doing the complete schema.org suite on the website (to good effect, btw.)
- Both doctors have different domains now ... and the one group practice domain; the GMB entry is connected to the Website of Doctor A, though.
So again, thanks for your hints!
Nico
-
Hi Nico,
In addition to the good advice from Phillip, I recommend looking carefully at the following:
-
No shared phone numbers.
-
A unique page on the website for each doctor, to which each GMB listing links. Main practice can link to homepage.
-
Try not to share categories between the listings. Give the practice the most important category and find others for the individual practitioners.
-
-
I just went through something very recently that was similar, my doctor left a practice and started his own. His name continued to rank at the old practice (even when the only trace of his name left was in a title tag).
We did a few things:
- Complete separation of GMB pages. The pages were very specific for the location and the doctor. We then tied these to specific location pages instead of homepage.
- Checked all citations / NAP out in the web and updated them to the respective doctor's locations. We had a similar issue, number/ names etc., were not consistent.
- Used SameAs Schema on their contact page to the GMB page (https://schema.org/sameAs) along with the usual Schema for their location / profession.
End result is that depending on the search location and slight variance of the terms, they will both rank in the 3 pack / map.
Our biggest hurdle was one of their GMB pages was deleted and showed them as permanently closed. This caused a lot of issues for mobile users looking for phone numbers and directions.
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
-
Practitioner Vs Practice Listings: Local Pack Issues
Hi, and THANK YOU! in advance for any input you give, its much appreciated. We've been doing research on this and also wanted to see if the community could provide any more input. We work with a plastic surgery clinic. The namesake of the surgery clinic is that of the first doctor: Practice Name: Gardner Plastic Surgery Plastic Surgeon 1: Dr. Gardner (we've worked with him since at least 2015) Plastic Surgeon 2: Dr. Baccaro (joined practice June 2018) Plastic Surgeon 3: Dr. Crespo (joining their practice starting Sept. 1 2020!) To summarize our issues to date: As we brought on our new surgeon Dr. Baccaro in 2018 we decided to ultimately claim his practitioner GMB listing, and to claim Dr. Gardner's (which had been unclaimed and we had to eliminate duplicates.) Before deciding to utilize the supplementary practitioner listings, we were managing/optimizing their main practice listing: Gardner Plastic Surgery. We continued to primarily/heavily optimize “Gardner Plastic Surgery” and mimicked the details for “Dr. Gardner” and “Dr. Baccaro” From Dec. 2018 - Jan. 2020 we would from time to time notice that "Dr. Paul Gardner's" individual listing was showing up in Local Pack instead of "Gardner Plastic Surgery" but it was not really a big issue, happened very occasionally. Around Dec. 2020 - Jan. 2020 we experienced some Google errors when trying to create Google Posts with videos--it resulted in a few very random and unexpected suspensions. We were posting appropriate content, it seemed that Google was struggling to process our video files from API and it would get stuck in a loop etc. All in all the suspensions happened, and we worked with Google many times to try to understand and stop that from happening. Fortunately that hasn't happened since (and we now don't post videos to Google posts because that was a bit too stressful. We still upload to main photo/video area) Since February 2020 to present we have consistently noticed "Dr. Paul Gardner" appearing in place of the well-optimized full of photos/videos/posts "Gardner Plastic Surgery." We thought algorithm updates etc./COVID were all factors as to why doctors may be more prescient than a clinic. There were times where we thought it was fixed for sure, only for it to continue to crop up. Specifically we were trying to rank for the search term "naples plastic surgeon" What We've Done So Far: I've done a LOT of research and understand a number of errors we were overlooking from Q&As like this (duplicate categories/phone numbers): https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/gmb-page-for-law-not-ranking-but-individual-attorneys-names-are And: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/partner-outranking-main-site-in-local So I understand we have some decisions to make on the best path forward. We’re guilty of just about all of the issues Miriam elaborates on. ** As we move forward there are a few elements at play:** They are adding a new surgeon to the practice in September, we’re excited! Making a clear decision before he arrives is important With the addition of the 3<sup>rd</sup> surgeon “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is actually changing the name of its business to “Naples Plastic Surgery” as its much more suiting to the growing scope of practice. ** To end:** Wow. I wrote a lot and really appreciate it if you stuck with me! Some thoughts I had that I wonder if anyone has insight on: Is the fact that “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is “Dr. Gardner’s” namesake a huge factor into why the individual doctor is popping up more often? He’s well known and his name and his business name have been around the internet for years longer than Dr. Baccaro etc. Do you think changing the name to “Naples Plastic Surgery” along with other needed updates could help address the issue? Could our string of unfortunate, though ultimately well-intentioned suspensions be part of what’s enabled “Dr. Paul Gardner” to prop up as well? Should we choose to heavily optimize all listings and see how diversifying categories etc. helps? Should we try to de-optimize and focus on practice profile for now as that’s our main listing? If you have any other recommendations, I’d love to hear them. I think working on optimizing and diversifying our listings would be useful. Thank you again.
Local Listings | | MoxxiMarketing0 -
Why is my local page is ranking better than yellow pages for that particular search?
My search query is "façadier bastogne" in google.be which in English would translate as "plasterer" and bastogne being the local city I am targeting. I can't seem to understand why my site peintre-plafonneur-facadier-bastogne.be/fr would rank higher than our local directory "Pages d'or" (Yellow Pages) which has a high DA and almost always ranks first for similar searches as "peintre bastogne" (painter)? Not to mention my site was created by Pages d'Or. How did they manage to rank this so high whereas if you look at it you'll see that they have not made any SEO work on it whatsoever. Could anyone help me understand this or tell me which way to look in order to get that information? I really need this as I am paying a lot to this directory for my site and was planning to launch my own WordPress website.
Local Listings | | Thomaspdt1 -
How to create a filter view to view local search traffic in google analytics ?
Id like to be able to drill down into the local search traffic for a site in google analytics, i know i can get some analytics data via google's local places dashboard, but id like to see a more detailed chart in google analytics. I read this article and installed this filtered view dashboard from Local U, but it seems its stopped working since it was originally published back in July 13. Is there a more up to date method for capturing this data ?
Local Listings | | jpeg800 -
Local SEO Tasks When Closing One Branch of Multilocation Business
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!
Local Listings | | Ayres-SEO0 -
Google Local Result- Competitor Ranks without an Address. Why is this happening?
My client is in a fairly competitive local market and there is a competitor who has ranked locally for around 2 years, but they have no actual address on their Google business listing. Just city and state. The listing is always top three and it does have their website listed, but directions aren't even available as there is actual no address. The listing is extremely keyword dense (basically spam but they actually created a business with the spam name). Citation Example: Keyword dense business name, phone number, city and state only Have you seen this? Can you explain why this is happening? Is this against the rules/anything I can do? Thanks!
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
Local Directories: What are the best practices for manually updating over 500 listings?
We are currently using an aggregator for a client, but we will be manually updating 5 different local directories that are not included in the distribution for over 500 locations. I am wondering if there are any local experts that have a set of best practices/processes for this type of scenario?
Local Listings | | PureVisibility0 -
How can I rank for keywords Locally?
For this test I am using google's "Ad Preview and Diagnostics" tool in adwords. And I took some screen shots to show you my problem. My company name is PhillyDoors, Inc. and the website is phillydoors.com Keyword: garage door repair.
Local Listings | | phillydoors
Location: 19116, Philadelphia, PA (Location Of Office)
Ranking: 1 Locally, 1 Organically
Picture: 1 2) Keyword: garage door repair philadelphia
Location: 19116, Philadelphia, PA (Location Of Office)
Ranking: 30 Locally, 1 Organically
Picture: 2 Keyword: garage door repair.
Location: Philadelphia, PA (Location Of Office)
Ranking: 1 Locally, 1 Organically
Picture: 3 4) Keyword: garage door repair philadelphia
Location: Philadelphia, PA (Location Of Office)
Ranking: 30 Locally, 1 Organically
Picture: 4 I have done some link building in the past that is helping me rank number 1 organically. I am also using moz local and my score is 86%. (pic 5) I simply do not understand why I am ranking so well organically but my local rankings are pretty terrible. While the listing "Garage Door Repair Service" is ranking at the top of the list. I understand that it is against Google's policy to name the listing something like this when your company name and website name is completely different. What can I do to rank better locally for more keywords and more cities rather than just a single zip code? hrsZZfF TTFr1rQ aDJSwWV BnyZP BnyZP0 -
Google Local Listing
Q1a: How do I do off-page SEO for Google Local Listing?
Local Listings | | kevinbp
or
Q1b: Where can i find the resources to learn about off-page SEO for Google Local Listing? Q2: Is the off-page SEO for google Local Listing similar to off-page SEO for a website? In this case, I will have to create backlinks to my google+ business page? Cant seem to find the answers by googling. The results that come out are mostly on-page SEO to complete my profile for Google Local Listing0