The way potential clients find information on Google directly affects how you market your dental websites. If patients want to find a dental practice near their places of residence, they will do a local search on Google. A local search is geographically-focused. This means that Google will come up with results based on the location of your IP address.
This is why Google My Business (GMB) listing is important. However, anyone can create a GMB listing for your business. You can either claim an already existing listing or you can merge the duplicated or multiple listing. This is an important step you must take for your business because multiple GMB listings will confuse potential patients.
And remember, since anyone can change the details of a GMB listing, it is important for you to monitor your GMB dashboard regularly so you can address the changes that might be made on your listing.
Check the Addresses
Before making any changes on the listing, make sure that the addresses are exactly the same. If the addresses match, you need to contact Google and request for the two listings to be merged. If one of the addresses is incorrect, you can use the edit feature in Google Maps to indicate that the location does not exist.
If Google needs to respond, you might have to wait a few more days before they are able to verify that your report is accurate. Once Google merges the two or more listings, you must make it a point to do a query of your business listing regularly to make sure this will not happen again. Every time there’s a new business listing that crops up (and it does from time to time because of “concerned” people who want to make GMB more accurate), you need to merge that listing with yours.
Remove a Duplicate Listing
Of course, you can just opt to remove a duplicate listing instead of merging one with your own. Although remember that if the duplicate listing already has a positive rating and a number of reviews, you will lose this information upon its removal.
But if you’re hell-bent on removing a duplicated listing, you can sign into your GMB account and go to the duplicate locations section. Click on the location you want to remove before confirming it with the “remove location” button. You need to do this for every duplicate listing you can find.
Taking care of your GMB is important for the SEO quality of your dental websites. Make sure that monitoring your GMB dashboard is part of the duties of your social media manager.