How To Handle Dental Practice Closing One Office

[Travis Van Slooten]

I have a dentist who has two offices. They are in two different cities about 20 miles apart from each other. Each office has a different practice name, address, and local phone number.

He's closing one of his offices but he's thinking of "moving" the practice name from the closed office to the open office. Here is the scenario:

Office A:
ABC Dental
City A
612 telephone number
Google+ page for this office has 3 reviews and has been established forever.

Office B:
123 Dentists
City B
605 telephone number
Google+ page for this office has 0 reviews and has only been around for a year.

He's closing Office A but changing the practice name of office B to the Office A name.

I should point out, he's willing to use either practice name for the one office but he's leaning towards keeping office A's practice name since it has been around the longest.

Given this, how do I handle the Google+ pages? Do I just make an address and telephone number change on the Google+ page for Office A and then close the Google+ page for Office B? This would be ideal so we can retain the 3 reviews.

I'm just not sure what's the best way to handle this change. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Travis

 

[James Watt]

That's a really interesting question actually. Following this for the response. My gut feeling is that this is probably not against Google's TOS, if what the client is doing is changing their home office (in effect, it IS changing location A to location B and closing location B if the main dentists/staff are moving too, so the reviews are still relevant to the new location) but I've definitely never seen it done.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Does the listing in City B rank well?

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Hey Colan! Thanks for the reply. City A ranks #1 in the 3-pack and City B ranks #2 in the 3-pack but City B is much smaller so the competition isn't nearly as fierce.

City A has around 400,000 people and City B has around 104,000. City B is 20 minutes away from City A.

He's moving to City B and closing City A office.

Thanks!

Travis

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I would keep listing B. Three reviews is fairly easy to make up. Plus, you can likely get the reviews transferred. And perhaps you might be able to follow the process that Joy outlined here. Although this scenario is a little different since it's more of a closing of a business than a move - Google Is Fixing The "Permanently Closed" Problem

 

[JoyHawkins]

This scenario wouldn't classify as the "moved" scenario since they're not actually moving (they're closing down an office).

My vote is to NOT change the business name. The credibility for practice A won't just pass to practice B by changing the name and all it would do is create inconsistencies since there are probably lots of citations already for practice B. The reviews also wouldn't transfer if it's a different city/address/phone number.

My vote is to just leave it as is. If they have 2 different websites you might want to 301 practice A's domain to practice B. At least that would pass some link juice!

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Joy:

Thanks! Just one follow up question...if for some reason they decide they want to keep the practice name from their City A location then would I still just close City A location listing and change the name on the City B location listing?

Travis

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Absolutely (in my best Joy voice). Changing the address on A to B's address and then closing listing B is just going to cause more NAP and back end data issues.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[JoyHawkins]

Lol Colan. Yep, what he said

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks Colan and Joy! I appreciate it.

Travis