Local and Brand page?

[seoWest]

Hey guys,

I ran across a blog post which advocates maintaining a Local page and a Brand page - depending upon what your search goals are.

I have always maintained one or the other for my clients, but not both.

What's your take on this? Source: blog post

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Dino,

Sounds like the author does not specialize in local or is confused about how things work.

She said: A Google+ Local page: "does not require ongoing community management"

AND "A Google+ brand page does require community management, so it will take up more of your time than a Google+ local business page, but the SEO benefits alone will make it worth your while."

So she's misinformed on a couple counts. Sounds like she means social when she says "community management" which is a different animal and does not apply to either page.

Sounds like she doe not realize G+ Local has social too and takes work too if you are going to be proactive. So it's like she's saying 1 is just your passive business listing and the other is your active social page. As we know G+ L has both.

So in general I believe, and I've seen Mike say this as well, for most small businesses it's best to only have the G+ Local page which has everything you need. Typically you want to drive customers to social, on the same page that ranks and has all your precious reviews.

Of course it does depend somewhat. For instance a big chain or multi-location business may want G+ L pages for each location and one brand page for corporate or company wide news.

 

[seoWest]

Hi Linda,

Thank you for bringing some degree of clarity back to my fuzzy little brain ;-)

You know, as I was reading that post, I was receiving a few mixed signals, and you
nailed them. I agree, she did appear to have a few things convoluted.

A new client accidentally setup a Brand page, but he is a single location based business providing cycling tours, so I was actually searching for the latest approach to convert a Brand page to a Local Business page when I stumbled across her post. Later, I found Mike's post on the topic as well as the official Google doc.

Totally agree that the dual approach would make sense for some corporations with multi-locations.