A question for a real citation building PRO (I am totally lost on this one) Thank you for ANY help!

[Mrupp44]

Quick Q for your (local) SEO gurus.

I have a client who has bought a number of local companies. (advertising, printing, graphic design, vehicle wraps) to compliment his screen printing, embroidery, etc business. ALL of these companies run out of the SAME address.

What makes it even harder is he wants to continue operating them as separate companies. Fortunately, he is OK with using different phone numbers for each business but on the website (we are building for him) ALL the companies are represented like it is all one big happy company.

How the H@#$ do I build citations for this business! ??? THANK YOU FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!!

If I use the one 'parent' company building citations is a challenge bcs they do so MANY things in one location. If I try and build citations for 5 companies w the same address - that can't be a good idea either.

If the plan is to eventually fold all these companies into the one parent company *(waiting to hear back on that) I would think the BEST advice would be to use the ONE phone number and address and just shoot for a general 'marketing' category.

Thanks for any thoughts!!

Matthew

Saw Web Marketing

Quick Q for your (local) SEO gurus smarter than myself. I have a client who has bought a number of local companies. (advertising, printing, graphic design, vehicle wraps) to compliment his screen printing, embroidery, etc business. ALL of these companies run out of the SAME address. What makes it even harder is he wants to continue operating them as separate companies. Fortunately, he is OK with using different phone numbers for each business but on the website (we are building for him) ALL the companies are represented like it is all one big happy company. How the H@#$ do I build citations for this business! ??? THANK YOU FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!! If I use the one 'parent' company building citations is a challenge bcs they do so MANY things in one location. If I try and build citations for 5 companies w the same address - that can't be a good idea either.

[RobCairns]

Hi Matthew,

Unfortunately, without diverging addresses this is going to be very difficult to accomplish. The only option might be if you can create sub-addresses (i.e. Unit #1, Unit #2, etc.) for each of the businesses and represent them separately with citations.

I ran into a similar situation for an auto dealer I was working for last year. Basically had a garage and a dealership (separate businesses, same address, same owners) identified in their citation profile. We confused the heck out of Google to the extent they were removed from Map Pack listings. We switched to form 1 company from the 2 brands and lo and behold - back to 1st Place.

If your client absolutely will not bring all these companies under 1 name or brand, the best bet is to take the most wide-reaching of them in terms of services offered and promote that one. I would strongly urge him or her to make the move to a single business, however, as local rankings will suffer if he/she continues this way.

Alternatively, if there is a way to set up separate mailing addresses (the unit solution listed above) that is an option. However, it seems like a lot of unnecessary work for both you and your client.

Lastly, it would depend on if the business is dependent on Local SEO. If they are counting on Map Pack listings and Local search, then this is a priority. If they have a national service area, citations become less important obviously.

Hope this helps to clarify a little bit and sorry I can't be more help. Let me know if you have any follow ups and I'll give it my best shot.

Best regards,

Rob

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Matthew!

Good question! Best advice: build just one website and one set of citations for this business. What you are describing sounds to me (and would likely sound to Google) like a single business in a single physical location that has purchased other businesses in order to expand its menu of services.

Unless the business genuinely has unique forward-facing departments (like a hospital campus with one dept. for X-ray and another for ER) then the client would be taking a needless risk trying to promote the business as though it were 5, 6 different companies all in that same building.

Remember that Google reads street-level imaging. Should they take a look at the building's signage and see Big Guy Marketing on the sign, but see that the owner is also listing Little Guy Printing, Medium Guy Car Wraps and Funny Guy Graphics in his Google My Business dashboard all in that same building, Google would rightly have cause to be suspicious that they are being spammed, by a single marketing company trying to look like multiple businesses.

The good news here is that the owner is already wishing to consolidate. He should do so, and then you and he can both focus on building out one really awesome brand with a powerful, diverse menu of services (but just one set of citations)!

Hope this helps!