1 Business 2 websites: NAP issue?
-
I'm taking on a client who has two websites, one for auto sales side and the other for auto repair. We're taking on the auto repair site. They both share the same business name, address and phone number. Do you foresee any NAP errors if we direct all the directories to the auto repair site?
-
Hi Nick,
If you can take the business owner through door number one, I agree that will be the very best choice. Good luck with the conversation with him.
-
Great suggestions, Jeff. This particular client, for once, already has a great deal of reviews, but I have a few other guys in mind that could really use some good PR.
-
Thanks, again, for the great recommendations! I think we'll take door number one. All other avenues seem too messy and I think it's just going to be a matter of getting the business owner to admit it's time to breakup with the sales site. I'll let you know how it goes.
-
Hi Nick,
Good question! Unfortunately, you are correct to suspect trouble. Imagine you are a Google bot. You go out to search the web for data about ABC Auto Pros and you find not one, but two, websites containing this identical business name, and also the identical address and phone number. You don't know which is the authoritative website (abcautosales.com or abcautorepairs.com), because the core NAP is identical. NAP may best actually be thought of as NAP+W (website) and this business' decision to have two websites means that they are creating confusion for Google. Also, because organic factors play so big a part in local rankings, this business is essentially splitting the authority they should have in half.
As I see it, there are three possible routes here.
1) The safest route: get the business to combine their two websites into one. Use appropriate 301 redirects so as to maintain as much authority as possible. This method fully remedies the situation and the business can then move forward with a totally clean and powerful approach. This is the approach I would most strongly recommend, despite the fact that it will involve a big change and lots of work. Fixing this now could save years of future headaches.
2) The patch-up: If the business wants to engage in Local Search Marketing and insists on maintaining two websites, only one should be optimized with the business NAP. The second website should contain no crawlable references to the businesses name, address or phone number - not in the masthead, footer, copy or tags. Essentially, this will make the second website something of a dead zone, but this is the only way I can think of to try to prevent Google from associating website #2 with the business. You would need to go through the website with a fine toothed-comb to remove any mention of any part of the NAP and also do a citation cleanup campaign to attempt to remove any references to that second website anywhere on the web. Even with this work , there is a chance that you won't be able to control all references to the complete or partial NAP out there on the web. Google just has to find one mention of ABC Auto Pros referencing website #2 to begin to become confused. So, while you could go this route, it's not sure to work and would involve constant vigilance of the SERPs to be sure that this association hasn't arisen.
3) The iffy idea: Note that I'm calling this iffy. There does exist a precedent in the Google Places Quality Guidelines for a business with multiple departments to be eligible for more than one Google+ Local Page. The language states:
Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.
So, here, if the business had a separate phone number for the two departments and separate physical entrances for the sales department vs. the service department, they might be eligible for this approa_ch._ I say 'might' because this approach is most commonly associated with entities like hospitals and educational institutions. Google has long dealt with a history of heavy spamming in the auto sales vertical and, because of this, there is a chance that they would look with suspicion on this approach being taken by an auto-related business. I'm not sure. I would say that if the business does have separate public facing entrances for the two departments and can get a distinct phone number for the second department, then it would be worthwhile to go to the Google and Your Business Forum and ask the TCs there if they feel Google would be suspicious of an auto business taking advantage of this nuance in the guidelines. I would suggest you go by what they tell you there, because they see the problems and takedowns on a daily basis.
If you get an okay from them, then this would resolve your issue, as it would be okay for the business to maintain the two websites, optimize and promote both.
Long answer, whew! But this is one of those complex issues that requires careful thinking and good planning. Hope my thoughts are helpful!
-
Nick -
It's obviously not an ideal situation to have two different websites share the same business name, phone number and address. But I think you'll probably be fine.
The thing that is top of mind for me is that you're not going to be able to have two different Google+ pages for the businesses - auto repair and auto sales, as they have the same name, phone number and address. (At least without doing something like registering a DBA, or using a suite # or a different phone #).
I'd recommend adding as many images to the Google+ page as you can, and soliciting users for reviews.
One strategy I saw recently for auto repair places (via one of my photographer friends) was to print a 3x5 card with the business name, logo and ask people to review their experience on Google.
On the front side of the card, it reads:
Tell us About Your Visit Today
with Google ReviewsWe value your opinion and want to make sure we make your experience the best possible. Your feedback ensures that our team provides ou with the best in customer service.
(auto repair logo)
See reverse side for instructions on how to leave a review.
Other side of the card reads:
Google Review Process:
1. Go to www.Google.com
2. Search for [business name]
3. Click on Google Reviews (right of yellow stars)
4. Write a review
5. Sign in using your google account or click sign up for account in right corner.
6. Create Account.
7. Thank You!
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
-
Displaying 10 blog-posts from website homepage: Any loss in-terms of link juice?
Hi community, We started showing 10 blog-posts from our blog on our website homepage. Will this hurts us anyway by taking away link juice? Thanks
Link Building | | vtmoz0 -
How to increase my website root domains?
Daily I am creating new root domain back links.. but my website root domains are not increased much.. I will use to check moz open explorer. Moz have any algorithmic for increasing root domains....Any body can answer my question? Please
Link Building | | mzakaria0 -
Is it really possible to clean up a website from spam links?
I have an acquaintance/customer, who is a politician in Italy, he had a website under his name as domain firstnamelastname.it (where firstname and lastname are the firstname and lastname of the guy). He used it during his campaign, then he forgot about the existance and didn't pay the bill to the isp. I don't know what happen exactly, I assume someone registered it after it expired and started using it for some fraudulent purpose, because checking the backlink profile I can see the first backlinks from 2013 are legit and coming from relevant sources (local newspapers), but all the following 300+ links are spam, using keywords like "louis vuitton", "ralph lauren", and so on... Right now the domain is in status "deleted", so I could just register it again, disavow the spammy links and had recycle it. But I am scared as hell. I never had to disavow a single link in all my life, and I don't know if it is going to really clean up the domain from any possible google penalization. Is it?
Link Building | | max.favilli0 -
Link profile problem? User-generated reviews website suffering after Penguin
Hi all, We run a user-generated reviews website and we link to the websites of businesses with reviews. Many of them also link back to their reviews page (and in fact, we give them a widget to encourage this). I have a couple of questions about this; Most of these links are to legitimate, but fairly small and unknown businesses - which means a lot of our inbound (and outbound) links are low quality. Could this be hurting us? Given that the links are 2-way, could this be viewed as spam? Some businesses (including a couple with high traffic) have included our widget in their website footer - so there are thousands of (low quality) links from a single domain. Problem? The reason I'm asking is that our traffic suffered in the Panda update, and is again suffering with Penguin - despite the fact that we have a lot of unique content in the form of user-reviews. We've never engaged in any black-hat techniques. Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated. SEO novice here!
Link Building | | WOMO0 -
Bulk keywords is useful for website?
currently i saw a lot of website using tag or related function to add in bulk keyword to their site with unrelated keyword? will it useful? why they do like this? there have tons of keywords if you click in for e.g http://www.aliexpress.com/product.html there have tons of keywords if you click in Please give some suggestion if this way useful?
Link Building | | willy660 -
Why does my infographic rank better on other websites than my own?
I recently created an infographic that was quite popular in my niche and a lot of people linked to it and embedded it on their own sites. Now, if you search the term I was trying to rank for, everybody who linked to me ranks higher than the page that everyone is linking to and it's the page where the original graphic was posted. According to SEOmoz, I have the highest Domain and Page Authority than everyone else in front of me. How the hell is this possible? If you want to see for yourself, just type in "hot tub yoga" into Google and I'm on the second page, http://www.swimuniversity.com/blog/hot-tub-yoga-infographic I would love some help on this and I thank you all in advance.
Link Building | | mattgiovanisci0 -
New website, small business, niche market --- what's my best link building strategy?
Hi everyone, We are a small company manufacturing a niche product (indoor playground equipment), our new English website (www.funlandiaplaygrounds.com) has just been launched 2 months ago, before that we didn't even have a website in English. As the international sales manager of such a small company, I have to do all the international marketing jobs including SEO, but before this I'm almost a noob on SEO. I've just started the linking building work for our website, after a research on the links of our highest ranked competitors, I have found out that almost ALL of the external links of them come from directories and purchased links, many links are very dubious, please see the open explorer results below: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.spiplay.co.uk&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.softplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?page=1&site=www.china-cheer.com&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aileplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=internationalplayco.com%2F The search keywords is: indoor playground equipment. According to the latest SEO theory and numerous posts I've read here, links from these directories carry very low value, and solely relying on these links may even cause penalty to the website, but the reality is, all these competitors rank on the top as a result of these "spammy" links. For example this website www.aileplay.com that has the highest PA of 64 and rank on the first page on the search result of indoor playground equipment, has tons of spammy links. That is the situation we are facing now, then my questions is: As a small business in such a niche market, what is our best strategy to rank well in a reasonable time, say 3 months to 6 months? I do not think our competitors are very strong and hard to beat, I believe we will beat them in content creation for sure, but what should we do in link building? should we start to get directory links now, as it obviously works for them? Or should we first create more attractive content, then use these content to get natural links BEFORE we submit for directory, as recommended by most link experts here? If so should we just sit back doing nothing before the link worthy content is created and natural links starts to come in? I highly appreciate any comments! DSG_clan
Link Building | | DSG_clan0 -
Extracting contact info from a website
I saw a great link building article on this website a few months ago about finding competitors back links and using a program to find the contact info located in those back links. Can anyone point me to that article, or even the program that is used to get this contact info? Thanks!
Link Building | | StreetwiseReports0