Google map listing #2

[MissThumann]

My website ranks well locally and nationally, but shortly I will be adding a second site to my business. We will be ranking it for different key words but the same location.

My question is, is it possible to verify another google + & google maps listing for this site?

And, what does google think about having two sites for the same business?

Huge thanks in advance for any answers

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey

This can be problematic. I don't think that you should bend totally to the dictum from Google but you should be aware that with only a single address local SEO can be problematic. We have seen a client with two businesses - totally seperate businesses at a single address have both pages shut down by Google due to using the same address. We were able to get Google to reinstate the initial one after some tussling.

Some questions to ask:

1. does the business have a unique physical address?

2. does the business have a unique service area unrelated to the other business?

3. does the business have a unique and ideally local phone number?

The loose and largely hopeless advice from Google's own help pages is as follows:

• Represent your business as it’s consistently represented and recognised in the real world across signage, stationery and other branding.
• Make sure that your address is accurate and precise.
• Choose the fewest number of categories that it takes to describe your overall core business.

You can and we have successfully worked around this but you must ensure:

• Unique name
• Unique address (even if only a suite / office number)
• Unique phone number
• Clearly different categories on Google My Business

Then it just comes down to the basics like citation consistency and ensuring that the two businesses are clearly separate entities and deserve to be treated as such.

My primary thinking here is always anchored in the real world - if these are clearly separate entities then this should be achievable but we have to be mindful of some of the potential pitfalls with Google My Business.

I will also throw in a caveat that it is very hard to give specific advice without knowing the finer details but be aware of the potential issues here and tread very carefully. Ensure you create a clear divide between the two entities wherever possible (website, phone number, address tweaks, categories etc).

Hope that helps
Marcus

Worth a read:

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB

[MissThumann]

I believe in this case it's probably safer to walk on the side of caution. Thank you for your answer, you explain it very well.

Moving on, in order to help my new website rank - do you have any tips on getting trust flow to it?

Or is my only way through keywords, serp and on page seo?

Thanks:)

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey

As a local business the local SEO side of things is always useful - it builds visibility and even some links without the usual difficulty of doing this.

Then if this is a national business some sensible link building with a philosophy of building value and letting folks know about it always going to be required. If you can do this via other activities that have a direct marketing benefit and also aid your SEO then I always feel that delivers on the short and long term goals for the business.

Hope it all goes well!

Marcus

[MiriamEllis]

Just adding to what Marcus has written ... a multi-site approach is very rarely recommended for local businesses.

While Google can typically handle multiple businesses at a shared address, they need to either be:

a) legally distinct businesses (like a dentist and carpet cleaning company)

or

b) distinct forward facing departments within a business (like the service dept. and the sales department of a car dealership).

And, each would need to have its own direct phone number.

What Google does not want is any single business attempting to appear like multiple businesses. So, for example, a law practice creating 1 GMB listing for its personal injury services and another for its corporate law services. If it's just one business, at one address, it is only eligible for 1 GMB listing.

Hope this helps!

[Marcus_Miller]

Totally agree with this from our experience - always, always, always use a single site if possible but if they are radically different businesses then it can work but there are annoyances on route.