[markhisle]

Been in business 20 years currently with 14 brick and mortar locations. I see totally conflicting info for google business profile name. Google say Name only. SEO folks say name followed by city. Pretty sure the location pages H1 should match the business name on GBP exactly. We are working on getting one of our profiles off of suspension and luckily we have all sorts of supporting paperwork, but had we changed the name to business name -city it may have been a problem.
1 - for our GBP should we change from just our business name to business name - city....then get dba's to match just in case we get suspended. national competitors have business name - city.
2- is the juice worth the squeeze to make this change from a ranking factor? If we did I would get new citations done through white spark first ...wait 2 weeks then make the GBP name change, agreed? Or am I overthinking it?
Again- every single "google expert" video I have seen says business name only, but these "experts" the best I can tell, don't work in the real world.
3- I am looking for a local seo expert to work with my team to get us heading in the right direction. Starting with structurally correct location pages designed for our GBP.
thanks,
Mark

 

[Tim Kahlert]

Hi Mark!

1. If your main service is part of the business name and the majority of potential customers uses the city as a geomodifer in their query the answer is yes, get a DBA with that city name in it. The name is a big local ranking factor. From experience I can say that whether the name gets approved or not is up to the individual Google rep. We have never had to prove a city name as part of the business name but that might be different for others.

2. You can change the citations first yes but I would only do that on the major citations if it's too much of a hustle to change it everyhwere else. FB for example is usually not an option for a name change. What Google doesn't want is mislead customers(searchers) - if your business name is unique and you add the city the business is located in to it Google doesn't have a problem with that. The problem occurs when the business name is entirely different after the change to mislead and disguise.

3. I'm gonna share this thread with others to find someone for you.