2 Separate Businesses, Separate Addresses, Same Phone Number

[bravemem]

Hi folks,

I'm wondering the possibilities of the best route to take in this situation.

We work with a fairly large corporation that owns & operates "mini companies". They're 100% legit and the services they offer are real & good.

Two of the businesses are similar in industry.

These two businesses have completely separate names, completely separate websites, completely separate addresses, but share the same phone number.

Since each business in their own right is pretty popular, they have naturally gained a lot of citations (NAP). Cleanup for one of them will never be 100%.

Is it still possible for both GMB locations to have a chance in Google Maps or what risks are involved in this situation.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

If they are in the same industry, especially if they have the same categories and phone number, there is a really good chance that one of them will get filtered for certain search terms. Is there any reason not to get a unique phone number for each location?

 

[bravemem]

Thanks for the reply.

I was speaking with the company about a different phone number and they're down for it, but there are already 200 big citations and that's the site with fewer citations. The other one has close to 1k.

Even with 200 citations, cleanup and fixing the phone number for every single one would be impossible.

Even the big data aggregators have the same number for both businesses.

Each business is well-established so this won't be an easy one.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

You wouldn't need to clean-up all 200 citations. If you went that route you only really need to focus on the Data Providers as well as maybe the top 20 to 30 plus any niche sites. You could also leave the original number in the GMB dashboard as an "additional" number to help Google connect the dots.

Do either of the listings currently rank well? Whichever one is performing better is the one that I would keep existing phone number for.

 

[bravemem]

Thanks Colan.

One of them ranks well, the other (with the 200 citations) are just starting an SEO campaign.

In your mind, what makes a citation considered a "top citation" versus another? I know that if the name is popular and recognizable, of course, but is there any other criteria?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I use this guide - https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/ as a reference. Bright Local has a great one as well - https://www.brightlocal.com/2017/03/22/top-50-local-citation-sites/

As a rule of thumb, do a search on Google and clean-up the sites that are on the first two, maybe three pages.

 

[bravemem]

Thank you, Sir. Extremely helpful.