how would you handle a dentist practice sold to a new owner

[RonRuiz]

I have a dentist I've worked with for years. He has been ranked near the top in Google local from the top keywords for years and gets a lot of patients from it. The practice name is the dentist name.

It was just sold to the new owner who wants me to help him keep it ranked. It would be a lot easier if the practice name wasn't the former owners name.

The plan is in a year or so have everything associated with the new practice name.

My thought was to keep the current site, add content over the next year about the new dentists and practice name while keeping the current content on the site. I would also start a new site with the practice name and content so it has time to age over time and new patients would be used it.

However if I use the same address and phone number on the new site could it hurt the current rankings? That's the last thing we want to do.

The idea is in a year or so keep both sites or if it can be done without disturbing rankings convert over to the new site.

How would you handle this situation?

Thanks Ron

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ron,

I did a consult for one of my Dental clients in a similar situation.

His site was like johnsmithdds .com and he's been ranking #1 steadily forever now.

But he brought his son into the practice so they wanted a new site and new practice name like smithfamilydentistry .com.

I recommended they build smithfamilydentistry .com but with NAP in an image so it would not conflict with the old high ranking site. Work on SEO and build up the new site in organic. Once it starts ranking high enough, then add NAP in readable text, add schema and all the other local hooks I teach, then change the link over on the G+ L page. (That was the short version in a nutshell, there was a lot more to it.)

But I think something like that may work here as well.

 

[RonRuiz]

Thanks Linda that sounds like a great plan. I didn't think of putting the NAP in an image on the new site.

While we are waiting for the new site to rank do you think there would be any problem adding a page or two in the current site about the new dentists (keeping everything about the old dentist.) Also mentioning the new practice name in the content but not making it a headline or anything?

Ron

 

[Linda Buquet]

It's soooo hard to say. Google is so all-seeing and all-knowing and seems to be very good at tying things together. But as long as NAP is not readable on the site I think the other content mentioning names and stuff would be OK.

 

[RonRuiz]

Good point.

I guess to be safer I could make any content I add to the new site about the new dentist and practice in images.

Ron

 

[Linda Buquet]

No you need the all the rich text content and need to start branding the new Dentist I think.

I would worry more about mentioning the old Dentists name. The new Dentist is fine, just don't want to confuse Google with 2 sites that look like they are both for the old Dr.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I had a chiropractor switch business names.

I just went through and changed the business name everywhere on the site (kept the same site by the way because the domain name was not branded) and updated all citations within 1 week.

There was no fall out and they've held their ranking for about a year now.

In my opinion, I wouldn't be worried about it.