Franchisor's Link or Franchisee's Link to GMB?

[Jim Froling]

A client is a franchisee for a national services company. He maintains a website for his franchise which is separate from the franchisor's and which prefers to be the central focus so he can track traffic, conversions, etc.. There were also two G+ Pages, one for each URL (his own & franchisor's). When they retained us six months ago his ranking in local search had virtually disappeared . Lots of dupe and inconsistent NAP issues which we have cleaned up. The cleanup appears to have benefited the G+ Page linked to the franchisor's site most as his rankings have bounced back to #1-3 for most keywords.

I fear that it's just a matter of time until the duplicate G+ Pages adversely affect his rankings again. My plan is to delete the G+ Page page linking to his website then changing the URL on the G+ Page page that presently links to the franchisor's site.

Or not? I wonder if the G+ Page page linking to the franchisor's site is ranking well again because of, among other things, the higher domain authority of the franchisor's site compared to the client's personal site. Will associating the weaker local site with the stronger G+ Page hurt his rankings?

 

[Broland]

It's really going to depend on more factors and details. Such as the business name used on listings for each, domain, anchor text of inbound links alongside "citations"... and do both use the same address and phone number on all listings now that you did your cleanup?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Jim,

Yes I'm with Broland - answer is it depends - not quite enough details.

I wondered about NAP on the 2 G+ L listings too. Are names exactly the same?

I hope these aren't both claimed? Almost sounds like they are?