In case you have been living under a rock, for the past decade the general consensus is that a keyword rich business name is one of the most significant ranking factors for a Google Business Profile.
And this remains number two in the Whitespark 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors
Given this general consensus I nearly had heart failure when a client decided to rebrand earlier this year!
Previous Google Business Profile Name: Tunbridge Wells Chiropractic & Shockwave Clinic
New Google Business Profile Name: Vale Health Clinic
The client is expanding their Men’s Health offerings and the old business name restricted this growth. I completely agree BUT nevertheless I had a frank discussion that this would most likely result in local position and local pack drops.
Ranking Impact of GBP Name Change
Please Note: This involved a full domain change, so a lot of SEO planning went into play, but this is about the name change in GBP, and to keep this in mind that also played a role.
Change Date: 27th January 2023
Local Positions
You can see there were a few short dips, and to be quite honest about it, I was like “here we go”, but each time they recovered. Shockwave Therapy took the biggest hit, but there are no categories related to this and is the only affect due to name change.
What Happened?
There had been a lot of hard local SEO work with this client and in the early days, even their keyword rich name was not in the position you see above.
Pr-empting this brand change the companies details were updated towards the end of 2022 and citations updates followed soon after and completed by early 2023.
I believe that the site together with a smooth domain change has carried the signals across the name change in GMB and a very surprising turn of events to what I was expecting. A good local search strategy does not always have to include a keyword rich business name.
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