Spa Within Hotel

[Digitaldar]

This is a spin off to a question I asked regarding Hotel and Restaurant. The problem is that the hotel is coming up for both spa searches and hotel searches, whereas I want the spa to come up for spa searches. While the spa has shown up previously for hotel searches, I can't get it to come up in the local pack at all right now.

I have access to GMB for the spa. The URL is LocalHotelName.com/spa. I do not have access to the hotel GMB which is now HotelChain.com/location.

• When I run BrightLocal, the spa does not come up at all - the hotel does. The citations are that of the hotel!
• In GMB, the keywords that triggered the listing are all hotel keywords (I do not have GMB access for hotel to see if it is coming up for spa keywords).
• The spa categories are as follows:
  • Spa Resort
  • Spa
  • Health Spa
  • Beauty Salon
  • Spa and Health Club
• Competitor Categories are:
  • Day Spa
  • Medical Spa
  • Inn (this business is part of the hotel/spa business that I am referring to but is a separate building on the premises, typically used by wedding parties)
  • Spa (this is a vendor of spas and hot tubs)
  • Hotel (the hotel chain we are discussing)
• This is a small town - not all of the listings that are coming up are appropriate - e.g. spa and hot tub vendors; the spa is not coming up for specific searches such as massage, lash extensions, etc. --> but the hotel is
• not sure if this is related but on mobile I type the spa name and it comes up; but there is an ad running to book a room - could this be part of the problem? My client is not running the ad - corporate would be but they would send it to their chain site, not the local URL which is the case.

This is not so much a ranking issue but a not showing up issue.
In the other thread someone mentioned calling Google Hotels, but given that I don't have access to the hotel GMB and the client is not running hotel ads (but corporate is), I don't have the info to be in contact.

I will call Google now but look forward to ideas.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Two things jump out at me:

1. The spa definitely needs its own citation profile, if it doesn't have one already. (That's not clear to me from the post.) At least on the standard local-business directories and travel-oriented sites, and maybe local/regional directories. So maybe 30-40 sites. I wouldn't go bananas on the citation-building

2. How long has the spa had a GMB page, and how long has it been a separate entity in general? I'd give it time, if you haven't already. Clearly Google has associated the spa and its services with the hotel, which is a good sign. Most likely, you just need to make it clearer there's a new, separate entity for spa-related needs.

It's kind of like what sometimes happens when you rebrand a business and rename GMB page: searching for new, "correct" name won't trigger the GMB page, but searching for the old name(s) (sometimes including long-retired names) does trigger the GMB page. Google often just needs time to digest the new entity.

 

[Digitaldar]

Thanks for the reply @Phil Rozek!
I agree that the spa needs it's own citation profile. I had entered it into BL to see how it compares to the competition for top citations, backlinks, reviews, etc. but BL is giving me the corporate hotel URL for the citation - even though I have entered the spa info in terms of location, Brand name and URL.

The spa has had it's own GMB for some time - at least 9 months if not more. Of note, the hotel originally had it's own GMB (same domain URL as spa but different GMB listing - spa is at LocalHotelURL/spa) but corporate made them stop using that and took over GMB using the corporate URL for the hotel.

I'm not convinced it is a time issue give the length of time the spa has had it's own GMB... would you disagree?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Digitaldar, once it's got a clear "online fingerprint" (in the form of the citations Google and people would expect to see), then it's a matter of time. It's got to happen in that order.

So in this case it's a matter of putting in a bunch of work, and waiting even longer.

Scaring up some reviews and a couple of decent links in that time typically also helps, in my experience.

 

[Digitaldar]

@Phil Rozek this makes sense - there are reviews. I can't see their citations in BrightLocal as the freaking hotel chain URL is showing up (even though in Location Details the URL is NOT the corporate hotel URL.

When I go to Google My Business in BrightLocal, then summary tab and NAP Comparison, it says user supplied - that is mine. Then google supplied - it is the corporate hotel URL.

I have set this up for dozens and dozens of clients - there is confusion here

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Digitaldar, I suggest not relying on BrightLocal. It is high time for a manual audit, probably followed by manual work.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Are you able to share the listing and the query you want it to rank for? If not, that's totally cool.