GMB page for law not ranking but individual attorneys' names are

[elisa17591]

I'm kind of a newbie to everything marketing. I run the marketing for a small law firm. When I google certain keywords, the law firm's GMB page doesn't show up in the local pack or rankings. What shows up instead are the individual GMB pages under the lawyers' names even though we don't do anything to maintain those pages. Their individual pages don't have content or nearly as many reviews. I maintain the firm's GMB page by posting content and that's also where the bulk of our reviews go. Why would pages that aren't maintained show up in the local pack while the page that I keep a close eye on doesn't show up?

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for bringing your question to the forum.

While this is a common scenario you are describing, the best I can do is offer general advice without seeing the actual client's results.

1. Are you duplicating GMB categories between the law firm and the practice? Try to avoid this, if possible.

2. Are you sharing phone numbers between the law firm and the practice? Don't do this.

3. Are there unique landing pages linked to from GMB for each practitioner? If so, are you optimizing these pages for the same terms as the overall practice is targeting? If so, diversify the practitioner pages so that they target longer tail terms while the main website pages for the practice target more head terms.

4. Are you doing anything with the brand's presence in GMB that could be causing Google to trust the practitioners more than the practice. For example, are you adhering to naming guidelines for both practice and practitioner? Have you resolved duplicate listings? Has the practice received any penalties, suspensions, or engaged in any forbidden practices like setting up listings for ineligible locations or acquiring fake reviews?

Evaluate all of the above and make any necessary adjustments. If, after a waiting period, you don't see the desired outcomes, the practice will need to determine whether:

1. It's a big deal, or not really a big deal, to have the lawyers outranking the practice for some terms.

2. If a big deal, the practice may need to decide to de-optimize the listings for the lawyers to remove as much of their ranking power as possible.

Hope this helps!

[elisa17591]

Hi Miriam! I hadn't thought about any of this but you've given me a really great place to start.

There's only one phone number for the practice and it's showing up on the lawyers' individual profiles. Should I just remove the phone numbers from their listings and just leave it on the firm's profile? I'm currently working on creating different landing pages because all the profiles point directly to the homepage of the main website.

I currently don't see any penalties from Google although I'm going to go back and look at naming guidelines. Besides linking to different landing pages and phone numbers, what else can I do to de-optimize the individual listings?

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Elisa,

If your law practice were my client, I would have them take these steps:

1. Get a unique phone number for each practitioner. It can be any number the lawyer is reachable at during listed business hours. It can be their cell phone, a phone at their desk, etc.

2. Diversify categories as much as possible so that the lawyers aren't competing with the practice.

3. Link each practitioner's listing to a landing page on the website for just that practitioner. Put the name, unique phone number and address as the top of each practitioner's page and then write good, useful content for the page, optimizing it for longer tail terms rather than the head terms the practice is targeting.

4. Be sure you've updated all other citations that exist for the practitioners on other sites, so that they include the new phone number, more diverse categories and appropriate landing page link.

5. Build long-tail kw focused links to these practitioner pages.

These listings can be an asset to the business in widening the number of search terms the overall practice is able to target. So, before you consider abandoning them, I would advise the client to think seriously about how the listings could benefit the practice. I'd implement all of the above tips I've given and then give it a year to see how the practice feels about the benefits coming from having these more diversified practitioner listings. Of course, be sure you are tracking this in Google Search Console for the year! And do be sure you're having the client assess whether it's actually negative if the lawyers are getting leads, regardless of how rankings are playing out. If it's income for the practice, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

If, at that point, the practice feels it really dislikes having practitioner listings, it could strip out all of their details to de-optimize them. Remove all but one category, remove photos, hours of operation, etc.

But, before doing something drastic like that, I'd really evaluate the good that could be done with the listings, in properly handled instead of being a muddle like they currently are. Good luck!