Best Practice When Selling One Location of Company with Multiple Branches - Local Search
-
I have a client with a small business with 4 different branches. Currently, we have a main landing page for the company, plus distinct landing pages for each branch with maps, territories, distinct phone numbers, etc., for each branch.
The company recently sold one of the branches to a competitor as they do not want to service that area anymore. They have asked me what they should do now. Obviously, we are going to remove the location page for that branch, but we also need to transfer the phone number to the other company for use as part of the sale.
What tasks should I look into for separating the branch from the rest of the company while still maintaining best practice for the rest of the site/company?
Thank you for your help and suggestions.
-
Just updating the URL of the post Miriam mentioned. It's been moved and is returning a 404 error. Try https://www.imprezziomarketing.com/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/ instead.
-
Hey Dominick,
You know - honestly what I'd do here is comment on Joy's post with your question! I bet she'll reply and because it appears she has dealt with your exact situation before, she might be able to offer some additional suggestions like that. Why not go right to the source?
-
Miriam,
Thanks for the awesome resource. It really shed some light on the process that I have never had to confront. I think the example of "relocating" the list of the sold branch would be the best way to do it. If they want to register the their address as they new branch at that location they can do that on their own time (who knows if they even have an SEO team...I doubt it). So it looks like the way forward is to ask Google to mark it as relocated to the closest other branch.
Can you think of anything else we should do? On our page we can make a note of it on the branch specific landing page for the sold location or just redirect that to the main page with all the locations on it.
What do you think?
-
Thanks, Dominick,
This scenario is actually more complex than it may seem at first glance because of a couple of things. It would seem like the obvious step would simply be to report your sold branch as closed and move on, letting the new owner open a new GMB listing for their new purchase. However, before you jump into doing this, do read this: http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/
I would not want you reporting the branch as closed to impact your other open branches, so please do read that case study to see if this helps shine some light on your strategy for this.
-
I am pretty sure they are renaming it, as my client is retaining their company name for their other branches. I do not know what the SEO/marketing plans are of the new owners. My client wants to continue to promote their other branches and the company overall.
-
Hi Dominick,
So, is the new owner going to rename this old branch of yours to be something different? Have you discussed with the owner what their plans are, in terms of website and Local SEO efforts for the newly acquired branch?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Local Pack Ads v. Organic Business Listings
Hey everyone, So I'm noticing lately that Google is showing ads via AdWords for my locations in the local pack. I am fine with that, but unfortunately it is now driving me a little bit insane wondering how much Google really cares about NAP, distance from centroid and or user, links to domain, completed business profile and so on. They will pull an ad into the top of the local pack for my location, yet, my actual organic business listing in some cases will not even show up until I hit the second page of business results. I get that it's Adwords, it's pay-to-play, but from most accounts, the differences in ranking for traditional listings results compared to business results on both desktop and mobile are pretty different. For example, by doing my traditional SEO best practices, I can rank high in traditional listing results even when my business does not show in the local listings. I have done this time and time again. I am able to accept that since we have 100 locations in the US and our lists were an absolute mess before I got here, that some of our NAP across multiple directories and listing sites are not exactly up to snuff which I have been working on. So I guess the thing is, if my location in Google's eyes is not good enough to be shown organically for the user even at the bottom of page of one of business results, why is it good enough to show an ad for my business location for that query as the absolute first result? Again, I know its Ad Words which basically allows you to cut in line like that special pass you can buy at a roller coaster park, but still. Isn't their goal to provide the best possible experience for their user? If they feel something is worth holding back my organic listing from the user, why is it fine with them to show the user that same location with the top possible local pack spot in an ad? I guess this is more of a rant than anything but I wanted to know if anyone else is dealing with this or anyone has any info they have found that could help shed light on this? It kind of just kicked everything I thought about trust, authority, links in order to rank in the local pack organically out the window. Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree0 -
Properly listing 2 companies with same physical address
MOZ, This is our first time using your service. Very first interaction with you after being recommended highly. [Information deleted for privacy by forum moderator.] We have questions about properly unraveling and correct way of listing local businesses. We want "Law offices of Michelle L Stowell" to be separate now and have its own contact info, what is the best way to separate these two business' contact info without negatively effecting the local search standing with SEO? They have two brands.
Local Listings | | OpenThinker
1. "Forester Purcell Stowell" and “Law Offices Michelle L Stowell” 2. Law offices of Michelle L Stowell. They actually have Yelp. They are getting leads, are they getting converted to Suitable retainers. We are managing both names through Yext.com. Both businesses have different phone and different URL. We were worried about having the same address. Will that effect us negatively? Someone went to Yelp and changed the main number to the incorrect. Are there rules specific to individual practitioner (lawyers) that would require additional steps to be listed properly? We want to follow any additional rules. Do they need to setup a separate phone number? 4240 phone is the number is Correct for FPS: 293-4000
Michelle - 293-4024 - should be that its their direct line to old assistant. need to change that number for her. But what are the rules as a separate individual practitioner as separate entity. Client read that google doesn't like have a phone number that forwards somewhere - they negative point you. IS THAT TRUE? Google have people who call to confirm your business info. We need to know if there are any specific instructions to tell our telephone company. She doesn't have a distinct website for her. We have setup a website redirect. It redirects to a landing page within the Forester Purcell website. Will that give us negative points or should we have separate site for better local results? Specialneedsfamilylaw.com redirects to http://foresterpurcell.com/practice-areas/special-needs-family-law/ — is that a problem with local search results? Thank you, Thomas Newman
[Information deleted here for privacy by forum moderator]0 -
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 -
Unique Local Citation Descriptions?
Hello! As SEO’s we have always understood that it’s best practice to craft a number of unique descriptions when submitting to local directories, rather than using one generic description across all directories. However, if we look at this logically; An average business owner (even if Google didn't exist) wouldn't bother to vary descriptions. They would have a generic brand template and simply submit the same description to each directory. What do you think? Is having unique descriptions a MUST for Local Business Citations, or is it ok to use one generic one? I look forward to hearing your thoughts, Lee.
Local Listings | | Webpresence0 -
Placement of products in URL-structure for best category page rankings
Hi! I have some questions regarding the optimal URL-hierarchy placement of products in a marketplace setting where the end goal is to attract traffic to category pages. Let me start off with some background, thanks in advance for the help. TLDR Goal: Increase category page rankings. Alternative 1 - Products and category pages separated, flat product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/listing-1 Alternative 2 - Products and category pages separated, hierarchal product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/product/category/subcat/listing Alternative 3 - Products placed directly under category page. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/category/subcategory/listing I run a commercial real estate marketplace, which means that our potential search traffic is _extremely _geographic. For example, some common searches are (not originally in english): Office space for lease {City X} Office space for lease {Neighborhood Y} Retail space {Neighborhood Z} And so on... These terms are already quite competitive, where the top results are our competitors geographic and type category pages. For example: _competitor.com/type/city/neighborhood , _is a top result, where the user reaches a landing page that shows all the {type} spaces for lease in {neighborhood}. These users are out to find which spaces are available for lease in these geographical areas, and not individual spaces. I.e. users do not search in the same extent for an individual product, in this case a specific empty space. Our approach has been to place an extreme bias towards a heavy geographical hierarchy. This means that basically any search, resulting in a category page, on our site results in a well structured URL like the following: _oursite.com/type/state/city/district/street, _since we are using Google Maps API's, this is easy and relevant for the user. Our geographical categorization beats our competitors both on extensiveness and usability, especially in long-tail search phrases where our competitors don't care to categorize where we are seeing real search volumes. The hierarchy only extends as far down as the user has searched, for example a lot of our searched just end up being _oursite.com/type/state/city/district. _ Now we are wondering how we should place our products, the empty spaces, in this URL structure. Our original hypothesis was that we should include the products in the original hierarchy, resulting in: oursite.com/category/subcategory/product. Our thinking was that we would both be serving the user with an understandable and relevant URL, and also provide search bots with a logical structure for our site and most importantly content for our category pages. Our landing pages are very dynamic, providing information by relaying graphical information on a map instead of in an SEO-friendly manner. I would however go as far as to say that these dynamic pages provide a ton of value for the user, much more so than our competitors, by describing relevant information about the neighborhood kind of like Trulia, just not in a bot-readable manner. This results in trying to rank them on their own merits being a challenge, whereas we were hoping we could create relevancy by placing products / listings and maybe even blog posts on the topic within the same URL-hierarchy. As of right now our current structure is oursite.com/products/category/subcategory/product. In other words, they are categorized in the same geographical fashion but under a separate URL-path. Our results so far is that we basically only rank for the product pages, and rank extremely poorly for our category pages, which is our ultimate goal to enhance. This is why we developed the above hypothesis. However, what we learned when we did some initial research is that very few e-commerce stores place their products directly below their categories. Most of the major websites we studied, and we looked at quite a few, just go for **alternative 1 **from above. The crux is that most of them choose alternative 1 but simultaneously implement bread crumbs that emulate alternative 3, just without the actual URL's. So, what I'm asking is, what are the actual benefits or downsides of the three alternatives? I feel as if I have a pretty firm grasp on how this could be done, I just need to better understand why most seem to choose to flatline their products or listings in the alternative 1 fashion. Thanks, Viktor
Local Listings | | Viktorsodd0 -
How to rank same business page in different locations?
Hello all, First of all thanks for answering my previous queries. Now, I have one more query and I am hoping to get best possible answers from you guys. Query: I have one business which is located in one city only and I have a verified listing there (I am ranking good in that city). However, I want to rank the same business page in couple of other cities as well. What should I do considering that I cannot create a new listing for other cities because I have my office in single location only? Looking forward to answers. Brian
Local Listings | | BrianBotts.0 -
The Local Stack Rollout - A New Day In Local
Hey There, all my fellow Local SEOs! Yesterday morning, I was searching for a car wash and was really puzzled to see my search return snack pack-style results, given that I wasn't looking for a restaurant, hotel or an entertainment venue. Sure enough, what I had run into was the rollout of Google's latest local SERPs, which for the sake of clarity, let's call the Local Stack. This is happening in multiple countries and across thousands of keywords and your local clients (or your local business) are likely to be affected by it, so I thought I'd post a heads-up here. Good Reading: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/06/7-pack-becoming-3-pack-with-mobile-like-snak-pack-rollout/ http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/07/thoughts-about-the-new-local-stack-display/comment-page-1/#comment-859275 http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/35481-goodbye-7-packs-only-3-packs-no-phone-address-all-local-results.html http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/35515-new-local-3-stack-local-pro-opinions-roundup-change-rocked-our-world.html That last one has a bunch more great links in it. In June, I wrote a post here on Moz itemizing my concerns about the Snack Pack and its impacts on the hospitality/entertainment industries. Now, these same concerns are coming to me local-search-wide, with the rollout of the Local Stack. My early days key points from looking at the new Local Stack: No phone numbers without clicking through to Local Finder, which I consider to be really poor usability, given the invention of the cell phone and the way we use it call businesses. No links to the Google+ Local page, meaning that consultants like ourselves may have a really hard time explaining the value of creating a Google listing when so few SERPs will now actually lead to that listing. 3 chances to rank when your city has dozens or even hundreds or businesses in a single industry seems next-to-impossible. It's not a good reflection of the diversity of the business scene in the real world. There aren't 3 Italian restaurants in San Francisco or 3 lawyers in Boston. There are scores of them. Google's Local Stack is a poor reflection of the real world, in my view, and makes every city look like a one horse town. On the other hand, the baldness of the Local Stack is making the 'more' link at the bottom of it really jump out at me, and if you click through, up to 20 businesses will show with the Local Finder. So, I'm a bit torn on this. Are the 4 businesses that just fell out of prominence with the removal of the 7 pack worse off or are 13 businesses now jumping for joy because they are in a sort of pack today that they weren't in 2 days ago? I guess this depends on how willing consumers are to click that 'more' link. Given the meagerness of the Local Stack, organic is likely a great deal more important now for every local business, but I'm concerned by SERPs I'm looking at which are mainly taken up by directories rather than any actual local business websites. So, those are some first thoughts from me and I would totally love to hear yours on this thread as you are trying to assess how you see this impacting your clients or your business. It's definitely a new day in Local!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis4 -
Is there any way to stop yahoo local from adding names to local listings?
I've been coming across many yahoo listings that have a "First Name, Last Name-Business Name" as the listing title including one that I came across that includes my name and my company's business. There's no reason why I should be listed on the listing. Yahoo, says that they pull data from other sources: Localeze ExpressUpdateUSA YP Yext But none of those sites have my name connected to them other than in the account information. Yahoo, doesn't seem to have a good way to fix their listings. I sent their customer support an email about it but I'm not expecting to get much out of it. Does anyone know of a good way to get around/fix this?
Local Listings | | spencerhjustice0