Dental Practice Acquisition SEO

[Derrald]

Hi Mozzers! I have an interesting online marketing challenge I would love to hear the community's thoughts and advice!

My clients (a dental practice consisting of 3 dentists) are taking over (buying) the practice of another dentist across the hall (same address except for suite #), who is retiring (we'll refer to him as "retiree" from here out for simplicity). The retiree's dental practice has close to zero online presence. He has citations across the web (google listing, yelp, healthgrades, etc), but no website.

My question is: How would you go about consolidating the web presence for my clients? We want to get the traffic for existing and potentially new patients searching for the retiree. The retiree isn't retiring right away. His presence for the next several months will be vital to my clients' success as he will introduce new patients to my clients and pass the torch, so to speak.

Would you create a landing page for the retiree on my clients' website & claim/add my clients' NAPW on all of the citations? That seems to be the best & simplest idea I've come up with so far, but I would LOVE to hear if anyone has any creative thoughts or ideas.

THANKS!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Derek!

In your shoes, I would track down Linda Buquet at her localsearchforum and beseech her to share some of her amazing knowledge of dental Local SEO with me

But, in the meantime, it would help if you could clarify - are you bringing the retiree's practice under the umbrella of your own? In other words, if your client is Green Tree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite A, then is Retiree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite B now going to be part of Green Tree Dental's offices, occupying both sides of the hall? Or is Retiree going to close its doors at Suite B and NOT be occupied by Green Tree?

[Derrald]

Hi Miriam! Thanks for the response and great resource! Sorry for the late reply...

To clarify- in this case we will be bringing the retiree's practice under the umbrella of our own AND also be taking over his suite space, occupying both sides of the hall.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Derek!

Good to know. In that case, I'm wondering whether you plan to abandon suite numbers altogether and just be at the street address, or are there other businesses in the building, as well, not related to yours?

[Derrald]

It's in a large medical building with about 40 other dentists, plastic surgeons, etc as well..

[MiriamEllis]

Got it! There are 2 options I can see here, and like I said, I'd be very inclined to do some consulting with Linda Buquet in your shoes, if she were available, and show her the complete details of the scenario.

From the limited details I have on this, I see 2 options for you:

1. Do a total citation audit first to make a record of all listings located at suite B and formerly occupied by the retiree. Then, if one of your 3 dentists will be occupying suite B, you would be editing the name (and I'm assuming phone) of these to reflect the new dentist. The main problem with this would be reviews ... it's likely that they would reference the retiree and that could be problematic.

2. Read this thread and the links it contains regarding Dr/Dentist duplicates: https://moz.com/community/q/dental-practice-google-and-dentist-personal-google You may need to minimize the old listings and create new ones.

I have to confess, the situation with the firm occupying two suites is throwing me a bit. I've never personally dealt with a business that was organized that way, and it's unusual enough for me that I'd be inclined to seek professional consulting, particular given Google's very irregular handling of listings for doctors and dentists.

At the very least, I hope my reply points you in a good direction for further research into how your practice should handle this.