Multiple DBAs within same industry, same address, different phone numbers

[Lloyd Silver]

Typical situation.

Photographer is a sole proprietor and has two websites - one for weddings and one for all other photography. DBAs have been filed for both brands. Each brand has its own phone number. The address is shared but hidden as its residential (again, pretty typical of photographers).

I understand from a branding and user experience perspective why two websites is the right move. We're now setting up his G+ and GMB pages as well as other citations.

Even though there are separate phone numbers and DBAs, I'm presuming this falls into the category of a single business in Google's eyes (and legally, of course). So there should be one GMB page.

So then the question is which website to consider "official". It also brings up the question of linking to both websites from the G+ page.

I'm thinking the best solution might be to create yet another website but one that is truly the official one and can link out to both of the other sites as appropriate. And that would be used for GMB, citations, etc. Of course, that would mean optimizing that site if we want it to have a chance of showing up in the local 7 results since the underlying website play an important role in those rankings.

Is there a better approach?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Lloyd,

You are right. Only 1 G+ L would be allowed in this case.

But a new site would take time to rank. I'd consider picking the oldest or most authoritative and maybe make the home page partly about each and then link to the 2nd one when explaining that part of the service or something.

 

[Lloyd Silver]

Thanks Linda. The existing sites are both fairly new without much authority. That's why I was thinking of simply going with a site that could feed into both of the others.