Local + International Brand (not business name?)

[Klaas Koopman]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I've been here, that's because it just was really busy over here. Now that I've got a bit more time, I want to get more involved into local search and ofcourse this forum!

My situation;
I'm trying to brand my own name, and ofcourse I want to jump in the serp's. I managed to get my own name on a .com, and a am working on setting up multilanguage (English and Dutch).

My business name (inspired media) is already listed as a company on my home office.

Q1: Is there a way for me to get a local listing for my own name?
Q2: Is it possible to get multiple businesses on 1 adress (or brands)?

 

[James Watt]

Hi Klass! Welcome, I'm doing the same... always knew about this forum and used it a lot for troubleshooting, but I've decided too it's time to start getting involved more, cool stuff.

You've seen the Google Guidelines I'm sure, but figure I'll paste them here, always good to start the conversation with.
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

"Represent your business as it?s consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding."

The one interesting caveat, and I think this is what I'd be interested in seeing this thread's discussion center around, and what would most closely answer your question, is this aspect of the guidelines:

Solo practitioners belonging to branded organizations

If a practitioner is the sole public-facing one at this location and represents a branded organization, the practitioner page should not be separate from the organization?s page. Instead, create a single page, titled using the following format: [brand/company]: [practitioner name].

Acceptable: "Allstate: Joe Miller" (if Joe is the sole public-facing practitioner at this Allstate-branded location)

Or more specifically... Google's examples are tax attorneys, doctor's, dentists, etc. So... what about a solo practitioner consultant? What does everyone else think? Would Inspired Media: (consultant name) be appropriate for a marketing consultant?

As far as whether you're allowed multiple businesses per address... only if they're actually multiple businesses. You aren't allowed to have multiple profiles for multiple services, and you definitely aren't allowed multiple profiles for two different brands that are ultimately the same company. From what you've said so far at least, sounds like you need one profile, and you should be looking towards making pages to rank organically for keyword areas you can't hit with a GMB net. There's no reason too that you can't have two websites... just that only one of them can be directly attached to the GMB page.

 

[Klaas Koopman]

Thank you for your great reply, lionandtheram, I really appreciate it!

How about adding a rich snippet for a person or author?

I'll look into this a bit more. Any other forum members who have some advice on this? Are their

 

[Linda Buquet]

Welcome back Klaas!

Hi Klass! Welcome, I'm doing the same... always knew about this forum and used it a lot for troubleshooting, but I've decided too it's time to start getting involved more, cool stuff.

James I'm really glad you did. Your contributions have not gone unnoticed!

You know that saying "what goes around, comes around?". You might me surprised at how true that is if you keep up the helpful replies here and at the GMB Community.

 

[Klaas Koopman]

Welcome back Klaas!

Thank you Linda!

 

[James Watt]

I'll be sticking around, definitely see how much it's helped my game, so I'll be needing it just to make sure I know how to help my clients... but yeah, excited to see what 2016 ends up shaping up to be! Either way, glad there's a collaborative community in this space, I trend too much towards trying to learn things on my own, this is much better.

@Klass,

if you're talking about the rel=author tag, that got discontinued sometime back in late 2014 if I remember right. It doesn't do any harm to include it, but I don't think that's the solution you're looking for. Like I said, if you're allowed, I think brand: name would be the best solution, but there's a lot of things that Google seems to look at when deciding what your business is about. I know the description stopped being something that's displayed, but it'd probably be good to mention your name there. I know that Google looks at common phrases in customer reviews, so if customers happen to mention you by name when writing their review, that would probably influence it too. Beyond that, I'd be looking to get organic ranking for my name with a page on the website. Either way, hopefully you've got a lot less famous name than I do.