How a Multi-Location Clinic Stops Competing With Itself

You opened another store and the rankings of the group declined. This doesn’t make sense until you check which page Google shows you. If several sites are vying for the same search, no site wins, which is multiple locations competing on Google, and this guide shows how to find it and decide who owns the search.

In this Guide

• How to tell if your pages compete
• The forty-minute diagnostic
• What makes a location page different
• Who owns this going forward

How does a multi-location clinic stop its own sites competing?

By choosing which one page owns each search, making every other page truly different, and consolidating or redirecting the rest, because otherwise Google picks one of your pages for you, often the weakest.

Imagine 3 clinics, locations from 3 vendors, all under the same brand, 2 of which are still on the domains purchased with them. The page of the flagship is the thinnest and the last page to be written.

Most searches return one result per site on a search engine. If two pages are competing, your authority is divided and a third party wins.

Are my pages actually competing?

To determine which page should rank: check the rankings for every city term, check rankings before and after the new site, and list the queries that each page ranks for in Search Console.

This is jargon, and SEOs file this under “keyword cannibalization multi location”. Type each city name in a separate incognito window and record the URL.

The work of clinic group seo at twelve sites is much more than forty minutes, and if the reader wants to get someone else to do a diagnostic across every location, they can hand it over to a specialist who has already done it.

Before you attribute the drop to a new algorithm update, read about when the drop has an internal cause, and do that before you spend any money on fixes or take the blame.

What makes a location page genuinely different?

The clinicians that worked there, the services offered at that building, hours, parking, insurers accepted, content a patient could only have gotten from that building, not one template with the city swapped.

Most groups have the same 300 words with a different city name, stock photo and staff list, and the same paragraphs about compassionate care. Google’s guidelines on helpful content shed light on why near-identical pages don’t work, and that is the heart of the issue.

Every page needs something that is unique to it alone. That’s what pages that are actually distinct look like: each would have its own self-referencing canonical, and clear internal linking from the service page.

One domain or several?

One domain almost always, because every acquired site left live splits the group’s authority and doubles the upkeep. The exception is a brand so unique locally that its name is the asset.

Two websites same business is the expensive way, so audit the ranking URLs on the old domain first, map each ranking URL to a destination, redirect page to page, and have each redirect permanent. Look at consolidating domains without losing what ranks, considering the technical aspect of a merge and the order of consolidation.

Consolidation can move rankings in either direction until they settle, so a group that relies on rankings for revenue should plan the work and accept a dip instead of rebuilding everything in one weekend.

The profiles are competing too

A group often has more Google profiles than staffed buildings, and duplicates show in map results as in organic ones, usually from a verification issue that was never solved.

Operators know it: a profile edited for a year that was the wrong one; a duplicate profile for the old phone number; a suite from 2023 still listed.

Review each of your buildings one by one against the rules in Google’s guidelines for representing your business, which is one listing per staffed location, with duplicates closed and/or merged.

Once all the duplicates are removed from the map results, the goal for the whole group is one profile per building, managed properly from a single login you control, with one named person responsible for each.

Which page should own which search?

Every page is excluded except for the home page, city terms (on the city location page), service terms (on the service page for that service), and service-plus-city terms (on the location page for that service, in the same city).

This is the stick that is made in the fourth column. If there is no named query owner per row, the map is just a document, and won’t prevent a manager from publishing a seventh page on the same service.

What if two clinics are in the same metro?

Then they’ll be competing with each other, and the truth is to sort them by neighborhood, specialism or insurer instead of city, since two pages with the same metro term can’t be the winners.

Two markets eight miles apart are two markets in Houston, Dallas Fort Worth or Austin. The two locations, two miles apart, are one market, and the group must decide which one to keep, and most groups operating across Texas settle it by service line rather than by city, which keeps each page’s job clear.

If you wish coverage in a city without any building, then read about ranking in an area with no building and what coverage in addition to addresses really takes, because another site is not usually the answer.

The acquisition nobody closed out

The old site, profile and directory entries of an acquired practice keep ranking and sending enquiries to a phone no one answers, so closing them out often returns the most value.

Find the old domain’s registrar and host, who owns the old profile, and which directories list it. Determine if they are redirected, updated or claimed, especially when you begin with a clean-up, because old details still live across the web and patients still call long after the practice has changed hands to other owners.

Who decides this across a group?

One person or team per location with authority on its pages and profiles, as the problem will reappear when the location can post without reference to the map.

Before you hire anybody for a consolidation this size, read Google’s own Do you need an SEO guide, which sets honest expectations on scope for a consolidation larger than one afternoon.

If the group cannot centralize, the person in charge of the CMS must enforce the map, and it must be short enough to use. That is when search run across a whole group helps, as one team keeps the governance and map together for all sites.

Stopping Multiple Locations Competing on Google, in Order

1. Run the diagnostic.

2. Construct the ownership map.

3. Differentiate the location pages.

4. Resolve the profiles.

5. Consolidate the domains.

6. Complete the acquisitions.

7. Hold the map.

To see what that looks like for a group like yours, read about how we work with clinic groups and the work that follows an acquisition, from mapping the queries to monitoring the results each month.

A consolidation is a dip in the middle. If a group cannot tolerate a quarter of movement, they should go location by location.

We’re a digital marketing agency located at 13121 Louetta Rd, Cypress, TX. Pink Socials can help you construct the map and the multi location local seo plan behind it.