In this article, you will discover the best strategy on how to do local SEO for multiple locations.
There are many benefits to having multiple locations for your business. The ability to serve customers in different regions, a higher volume of customers which means a higher volume of revenue, brand recognition and awareness - the list goes on.
But, with great brand power comes great marketing responsibility. And one of the most interesting, and successful aspects of your business; your multiple locations can make your marketing a bit more complex, especially when it comes to SEO.
This reinforces the importance of investing in your local SEO and improving your local visibility.
When you have multiple locations across the country that dominate local SERPs (search engine results pages), you are the first in mind for local customers. Multiply that by 100+ locations and you have national dominance, which is why having a well-thought-out local strategy is an essential part of your national/global SEO strategy.
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What is Multiple Location SEO?
Multi-location SEO is SEO focused around and for each of your specific business locations. This can include multiple locations in the same city, metro, state, or location across the country.
It's simply taking the practices of local SEO and applying them to all your business locations.
To attract people from various locations, you probably need to adopt a local SEO strategy.
Imagine your business has franchises or branches in multiple cities or countries. You may serve multiple regions or ship products internationally or globally.
How do you attract consumer traffic based on a particular location? The answer is multiple-location SEO.
Multiple location SEO helps you improve your search traffic from different locations. This way, locals searching related to your niche or services can see your website at the top of the search results.
Why is Local SEO for Multiple Locations Important?
Local SEO is one of the best ways to get your business to show up in local searches. This is important because nearly half of all searches have local intent, and 78% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase.
You could have great SEO for your business or brand on a national level, but if you're not focusing your SEO efforts on your specific locations, you're missing out on searches with local intent and buying intent (buyer and purchasing intent).
You need SEO for multiple locations for the identical reasons you need local SEO:
- Increased website traffic
- More visibility and brand awareness
- You get more customers
Steps on How to Do Local SEO for Multiple Locations
Here are some practical tips to optimize multi-location SEO for your business’s various locations.
1. Create a page for each location
The first thing you need to do for good multi-location SEO is to create pages based on the location of your business or consumers.
To do this, you can build a logical site structure so that search engines can easily find the landing pages dedicated to a particular area.
For example, if your e-commerce store has multiple locations, you can adopt the following URLs:
yourecommercestore.com/locations/texas (for a specific state)
yourecommercestore.com/locations/dallas (for a specific district)
Let's say you have a store in Fort Worth in Dallas. In this case, you can utilize the following URL:
yourecommercestore.com/locations/dallas/fortworth
2. Optimize each page for location
Google won't know your page is for a specific location if you don't make the effort to optimize it.
This means including the location in your title tag and meta description. Let's take this Dallas restaurant search result as an example. The title, URL, and description contain the keywords "Dallas restaurant", which helped the page get the top spot in the search results.
3. Create localized content for each location
Next step to optimize local SEO for multiple locations, you will need to create localized content based on the products and services available in a given region.
E-commerce stores with distinct products and services in each region may consider creating the following landing pages:
Store Location: Create dedicated landing pages with information about your physical retail locations (if applicable). Ideally, this would include your hours of operation, address, a map with your location pinned on it, and directions.
Images: Add photos of your retail locations (if applicable).
Product pages: For products that are only available in a particular location, create product pages optimized for the location.
Service pages: Describe the services you offer in a given location.
Blog posts: Create blog posts designed to attract local customers in a given area.
These efforts ensure that local customers will find information relevant to them when they visit your website and make a purchase.
4. Create and optimize Google Business Profiles
This is an important element of a good local SEO strategy for multiple locations. Create a Google My Business account with listings for each of your business locations.
Related:
How to use Google My Business for local SEO
A successful listing should include basic business information, product photos, reviews, and social media pages.
5. Manage reviews for each of your locations
Reviews are, of course, a valuable tool for gaining new customers, but as a ranking factor, they also have an impact on your SEO. Google takes into account factors such as the number of reviews, keywords in the reviews, and a mix of reviews (which means that having a few negative reviews mixed with positive reviews can help you appear more trustworthy).
Related:
How to get more Google reviews for your business
It's important to integrate review collection into your business practices by encouraging satisfied customers to give feedback on your main review sites. You can also ask them to include your location name in their review to improve your local SEO.
Getting good reviews can also help you appear in the Google 3-pack for local searches containing "best."
When a user includes the term "best" in their query, Google automatically filters out results with four or more stars. If your review is 3.7 stars, you won't appear.
By encouraging reviews from your satisfied customers, responding to positive and negative reviews, and even sharing your reviews on your homepage or social sites, you can improve your ranking and appear in the "best" searches near you.
Related:
How to respond to negative reviews
How to spot and delete fake Google reviews
6. Maintain NAP consistency across all listings
NAP consistency (name, address, and phone number) is another key ranking factor that impacts the SEO of multiple locations.
Google looks at signals to determine what information about your business is reliable and accurate. If your business information is listed differently on location pages, local citations, and review sites, Google doesn't trust that information and is therefore less likely to show your pages.
The more accurate your information is on all websites, the more trust Google has in its accuracy and the more likely it is to reward you with a search result.
When it comes to NAP consistency and multiple locations, it's important that the information on each location is accurate wherever it appears. This includes your business name, address, and phone number, and it can go as far as how you abbreviate street names.
As an example, you won't use 562 Main St. #2 on one site and 562 Main Street, Suite 2 on another site, even if it's the same address.
This is also why we recommend keeping the same business name on all listings: Google will know that these locations are part of the same company, while the address and phone number will tell it that they are simply different locations. However, if you decide to include your location name, make sure the formatting is consistent: My Business City or My Business - City, not a mix of the two.
Related:
7. Build backlinks for each location
Backlinks are links to your page from a website you don't own. Backlinks notify search engines that your site is both trustworthy and authoritative, which are two important ranking factors.
So getting local backlinks can help improve your multi-location SEO. The following is how you can get good local backlinks:
- Become a member of the local chamber of commerce and get your location page featured on their site.
- Sponsor a local event, team, or organization to get a backlink to your site (and for many other benefits like helping to build community).
- Partner with another local business for a link exchange.
- Establish a partnership with a local micro-influencer to write about your business or feature your business on their site.
- Write guest articles (guest posts) for local businesses.
- Get your business featured in local articles.
- Get local press about your locations.
Related:
How to find local SEO backlinks
Local SEO for Multiple Locations - Summary
Multi-location SEO can bring many benefits to your business.
Not only does it give you the opportunity to increase your brand awareness, but you will also attract local consumers. Since many people search locally, you can even improve your customer acquisition results.
Some of the best tips we can recommend when it comes to local SEO for multiple locations is to apply local SEO best practices to each specific location. A one-size-fits-all approach won't work - and it can cost your business in the form of fewer website visits, leads, and customers. But by combining brand recognition with a strong local strategy, you can win big.
The following are top tips for local SEO for multiple locations:
- Create a page for each location with a unique URL
- Optimize for location-specific SEO keywords
- Avoid duplicate content
- Try to get local backlinks
- Sign Up for Google My Business
- Manage reviews
- Keep NAP consistent across listings
