GMB Practitioner Listings vs Organization Listing

[Fiera24]

As a group of professionals I'm aware that we can list our organization locations as well individual practitioner listings, but I'm wondering if the practitioner listings would "weigh down" our org listings? Any advice?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Fiera24, the practitioner listings wouldn't "weigh down" the organization's GMB page in terms of making it less likely to rank well.

The main concern is category overlap. If you really don't want the org page to be third banana to one or more practitioner pages, then the practitioner page(s) should use GMB categories different from the org's category.

That's somewhat related to the (smaller) concern of where Google reviews should go. If you want to ensure that all Google reviews go to the org page, you may want to skip the practitioner page(s).

 

[Fiera24]

Thank you for your input Phil! That leads me to another question. What if the organization is listed in multiple categories (well, all that are options that fit appropriately). Then, would it be unwise to have the separate practitioner listing if they are in ONE of those multiple categories the org is in (but both have different primaries)?

Does it benefit me to have the additional practitioner listings?

And if I decide to remove them, which process should i follow? Mark as duplicate?

Thanks again!

 

[whitespark]

Phil nailed it. It’s a great idea to expand the terms your business can rank for by using practitioner listings to target different categories. Make sure you’re feeding reviews to all the listings.

 

[Fiera24]

@Fiera24, the practitioner listings wouldn't "weigh down" the organization's GMB page in terms of making it less likely to rank well.

The main concern is category overlap. If you really don't want the org page to be third banana to one or more practitioner pages, then the practitioner page(s) should use GMB categories different from the org's category.

That's somewhat related to the (smaller) concern of where Google reviews should go. If you want to ensure that all Google reviews go to the org page, you may want to skip the practitioner page(s).

Thanks Phil! What if the org listing uses ALL the relevant categories and the practitioner listing uses one of them? Does that mean the org listing can't use the category at all?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Fiera24, no, that's fine. The main thing you want to avoid is having the "primary" categories overlap. As long as the practitioner listing has a different primary category from the org's primary category, your pages are pretty unlikely to cannibalize each other.

 

[Fiera24]

@Fiera24, no, that's fine. The main thing you want to avoid is having the "primary" categories overlap. As long as the practitioner listing has a different primary category from the org's primary category, your pages are pretty unlikely to cannibalize each other.

That's good to know, thank you! On a similar, but different note, what about org locations that are somewhat near each other (5 miles apart). Should they have different primary categories as well? Thanks!

 

[Phil Rozek]

Generally, no. I'd probably keep those primary categories the same, but it's a case-by-case question.