Google+ may have failed to live up to its aspirations of challenging Facebook, but that doesn’t mean that the social network doesn’t have value. The social footprint you leave behind is valuable, as is the engagement you get from posting. But what do you do if you have multiple Google+ accounts?
The first thing you need to do is confirm how many Google+ pages you have. If you’re an aesthetic practice you should search for the name of the practice as well as the name of the physician, if relevant. This should bring up your Google+ pages. To be safe you can do a search for “(your practice) Google Plus” to ensure you pull up any Google+ page.
Next you’ll want to open each of these links up to confirm if they’re personal pages or business pages. You can quickly determine this by spotting key differences:
- Personal vs business info
- Hours of operation
- Reviews
If you have both a Google+ personal and business page you’re fine. There’s no conflict there. In fact, it’s advantageous to have both a business and personal page. Just make sure that you establish authorship for your personal page and that you claim and completely fill out your business page. To claim your listing simply click “Claim Listing” and then verify via phone or postcard. Once you’ve verified the business listing and completely filled it out you’ll want to post to it regularly, as well as generate reviews, to help boost exposure.
The biggest problem I run into is when there are two business pages. However, even in this scenario you still have more digging to do. Like attorneys, aesthetic practices can consist of multiple business owners. In the aesthetic world, these MDs can have business pages that appear to be personal pages since they list the doctor’s name, except they show the business’ hours, list reviews, etc. In this case you have a “personal business page,” and it may be conflicting with your actual business Google+ page. Stay with me because I realize this is confusing.
The problem with having a “John Smith, MD business page” and the “Smith Plastic Surgery Group” business page is that you may be posting to and driving reviews to the Google+ page in the practice’s name, but for some reason the Google+ page with the doctor’s name keeps showing up higher in search engines. The situation is really unfortunate when the practice’s G+ page has 15 five star reviews, daily posting, many followers, videos, and a completed profile, yet it is still is ranking behind the doctor other page that has one bad review, no posting, and an incomplete profile.
This is extremely frustrating and something Google reps can’t really explain. They cannot explain the algorithm, nor will they advise people on how it works, other than implying that age of the page matters.
If you find yourself in this situation make sure you first ensure that each page is claimed. Then, confirm the one is the physician’s business page and one is the practice’s business page. If you happen to have two practice pages you’ll want to confirm that they’re both claimed as well. I’d attempt to contact Google to try to merge these two, although you might be unsuccessful. Likewise, for a individual business page and a regular business page you cannot merge them.
You might be asking yourself, why can’t I just delete the physician page, but this is actually the wrong move. The reason? Google has stated that even if you delete the page it’ll still show up in search results. Therefore, you’re better off claiming the page and then changing the name listed.
You can, however, influence which page will show up higher, particularly if you want the higher ranking page (the one with one bad review and no posting) to drop. You can make the following change to your personal:
- Tweak the name: for example, change “John Smith, MD” to “J. M. Smith”
- Disassociate the listed website with your practice website
- Disassociate the phone number with your practice phone number
Still, there are no guarantees with this approach. You may simply want to consider building this page up along with your business Google+ page. That means:
- Completely fill it out
- Post to it frequently
- Engage with people
- Drive reviews!
If you’ve made it this far you may still be a little confused, so I encourage you to re-read and cross-reference all your Google+ accounts. Google certainly doesn’t make this process easy.
If you need help with your Google+ pages, or your online presence in general, then talk to TRBO today! Simply drop us a note here or call 877-673-7096 x2.
