Practice Name vs. Dr. Name in Local Search
-
I wanted to get some opinions on an interesting situation for local search.
Many doctors and dentists are found in one of two ways online:
-
Their name and title, e.g. Dr. James A. Smith, MD
-
Their practice name, e.g Smith Plastic Surgery, P.C
Often sites like Healthgrades are providing data on the doctor him or herself, and the information can be tough to switch out. At the same time, there's a tendancy on the Dr's part to want to be listed as their practice name. Their site is often set up that way.
How are you handling this kind of setup? Have you found a way to reliably associate (and format) a practice and doctor's name in a listing, in such a way that doesn't violate Google's quality guidelines?
I know the drill for handling a doctor within a hospital, but this is a slightly different situation...
-
-
That makes sense, Thanks Miriam!
-
Hi Bede,
Unfortunately, yes, there is some concern about odd, buggy merges whenever this multiple practitioner approach is taken, but, as Google allows it, you have good ground to stand upon if troubles arise. Mike Blumenthal says that Google is getting better about this, and I value his opinion highly.
One thing to be sure of is that you are using totally different categories for the two different Google Places/+ Local listings. In other words, the categories of the doctor must be different than the categories of the practice.
Hope this helps! Good luck, Bede.
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the response. You are making sense.
Your suggestion about it being two different opportunities is a completely different way of looking at it that I had not thought of. I was approaching it from the mindset of "Split or duplicate listings bad. One listing good."
What are your thoughts on how much crossover or confusion a double listing approach might create? I like the idea from a higher-level perspective. I do wonder if the fact that the business address and phone number are identical for each listing, while the names are somewhat similar (e.g. James A. Smith and Smith Plastic Surgery), might cause problems.
Cheers,
Bede
-
Hi Bede,
So, because of this from the Google Places Quality Guidelines:
Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
...essentially, what you are dealing with is 2 listings: one of the doctor's name and one for the practice name. There isn't a way (that I know of) to combine them all into one, but as Google allows you to have the separate listings, then basically, a client like this has 2 ranking opportunities, 2 citation building opportunities, etc.
Does this make sense, or am I not getting to the heart of your question? Please, let me know.
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
-
Once you start fixing Local citations with correct NAP, is it normal for your rankings to plunge at first?
I strongly believe that I have received the most solid Local advice I could from these forums and have started (in just a few days) to make the needed corrections. At the same time I'm somewhat excited and optimistic that it will be a long journey but that it's a learning process. About 5 days ago, I set my website up with "City landing pages" and I started plundering through google, fixing and claiming and correcting as many citations as I could with correct NAP. The journey still continues today as I just got my Bing Local card in the mail and verified. I went to check my rankings on Google Maps, just to see if anything had changed and sure enough it had. My listing had been holding strong at page 10 (which drives me nuts) and now after 5 days of solid work its on page 18. I have to assume that because I'm stirring the dust perhaps Google is confused and maybe in a month or so things might start moving the other way? Thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
Local SEO: Specific pointers on how to improve my campaign
Hello, I changed my address midstream in my campaign, from spelling out "Suite H" to now it's #H. Wow, what a cleanup job. I'm in at least 3 dozen directories I've found, and it looks like there are more. I'm adding myself to all the main directories that yext lists here. I've also used whitespark for a couple of months. My site is here. The term I'm targeting is "Boise Weight Loss. I"m on page 3 and not in the local results. Could you guys give me some pointers on how to get up into the top 3 of the local results? I'm planning on cleaning up and adding directories. I don't know how many I'll need, and of course I am looking for pointers on the other factors (besides citations) as well. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Local SEO: Links with the citations so should I slow down?
Hello, There seems to be some nofollow and dofollow links building as I add structured citations. Is this a reason to slow down the building citation process if you want the links to count? Do they help organic SEO?
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
How do you know if you are listed in google+ local?
OK This Google+ local and Google places merge is confusing. My first question is how do you know if your company is listed in Google+ local? I've done a search in Google Plus (logged in with another gmail account) but couldn't find my company on the results. Second question is that I am also not able to be found in maps.google.com, is this related? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | donovanfox0 -
Local business ideas?
Hello, if you are good at SEO and want to launch businesses thanks to your ability to rank high on local searches, what are some good ideas? I'm more interested in the market sizes than the difficulties to rank. Another important factor is the ease to do the actual business. Because of that, I'm looking for ideas like "appartment renting San Diego" because you can create a classifieds ads website where people pay for their listings. Another good idea is "marriage photographer New York" because if you have the orders you just need to hire a few free lance photgrapher. "car dealearship London" wouldn't work on the other hand because opening a car dealerhip is too costly. Thanks a lot!
Image & Video Optimization | | EndeR-0 -
Confused about Google+ Local vs Google Places
If you're doing SEO for a new local business that currently does not have a Google Places listing (or a Google+ Local page), do you have to set up both for them? Or do you simply create the Google Places listing and wait for Google to merge it to a Google+ Local page? I am so confused!
Image & Video Optimization | | MarieHaynes0 -
UBL or LocalEZE? Local listing submission vendor.
We are between UBL and LocalEZE for our preferred local listing submission vendor. DIfferences:
Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
*UBL does not have a relationship with local data vendors, but submits to axicom and infousa (as examples) which LocalEZE does not.
*LocalEZE has active feeds set up with many local vendors. What are your preferences? We are leaning twoard LocalEZE, Razorfish (the agency) is among their notable clients. What about submitting to both? I would be fearful that the data will overlap.0 -
Do I need incoming links to my mobile site, if I want to rank for mobile search?
Does a mobile site need backlinks to rank? Or are onsite factors the one and only here? And what are the most important "onsite" factors for mobile seo?
Image & Video Optimization | | jameda0