Local SEO for Multiple Locations: Strategies for Success!

Do you have multiple physical business locations, but they aren’t performing consistently? Chances are, you’re not leveraging local SEO for multiple locations.

This SEO type can boost the ranking of each of your business locations for local search queries and improve the overall customer footfall. But how can you leverage local SEO for different locations? Read along to find out.

In this blog, we’ll discuss what multiple-location SEO is, why it is important, and how to leverage it for better revenue. By the end, you’ll be able to make the most multi-location SEO boost revenue across all your locations.

What is Local SEO Multiple Locations?

Let’s say you have a physical store in Las Vegas where you sell customized birthday cakes. Now, one of the ways to attract customers to your physical location is local SEO. It involves optimizing your website and other digital assets so you can rank for local search queries.

For instance, if a user in Las Vegas searches for “birthday cake shops near me” or “cake shops in Las Vegas,” they’ll see the following search results. If you notice, the search results are from businesses within Las Vegas and the vicinity of the users.

The businesses listed above rank high as they’ve optimized their website and Google business profiles for local SEO. That’s the entire concept of local SEO.

However, let’s say you have multiple cake shops in multiple locations, including Los Angeles, California, Houston, and Philadelphia. How would you ensure all your local listings rank whenever someone searches for relevant keywords in different locations?

The answer is local SEO for multiple locations. This helps search engines differentiate between multiple business locations and rank your listings accordingly. How?

When you provide accurate information about every location, including address, name, phone number, reviews, and website, search engines understand the relevance of each location for local search queries. This enables search engines to rank your listings effectively.

So, by optimizing your website and GBP for each location (Los Angeles, California, Houston, and Philadelphia), you can expect your business to rank whenever someone searches for “cake shops near me” or similar keywords.

Why is Local SEO For Multiple Locations Essential?

Here’s why:

1. Get Featured in Local Pack Results

By leveraging multi-location SEO, you can improve the chances of your business getting featured in the local 3-pack results. Google’s local packs are a set of 3 local listings for local businesses that appear right above the organic results.

For instance, when you search for something like “Burger King near me,” Google shows you all the outlets based on your location. Here’s an example:

The 3-pack listings come with additional details such as directions, website, opening and closing hours, contact number, and an option to order. With this data, it becomes easy for customers to access your business and find your outlet.

2. Attract Local Customers

According to Safari Digital, 46% of the total Google searches include local intent. Also, 78% of local searches lead to offline offline-conversions. These stats demonstrate how important it is to incorporate a local SEO strategy for multiple locations.

When a potential customer performs an online search around a product/service they need, they’ll see the best businesses nearby. If you have invested in the above strategy, you can expect your listing to rank and, thus, an uptick in customer footfall.

3. Enhance Brand Awareness

An effective local SEO strategy can make product pages appear for local searches in the SERPs.

Let’s say you sell car tires in Milwaukee. A person searches for “car tires in Milwaukee” or similar location-based keywords. Now, if your webpages are optimized for local SEO, there are high chances of your product pages ranking in the Google SERPs, boosting your brand awareness among customers.

Now that you know the importance of multi-location SEO, let’s learn how to leverage this strategy.

Best Local SEO Strategy for Multiple Locations

Here are some techniques you can include in your local SEO strategy for the best results:

1. Location-Specific Landing Pages

Often, business owners make the mistake of including all of their information in a single landing page. And by doing this, they sabotage their SEO strategy.

The first step of your local SEO strategy should be creating location-specific webpages for all locations you serve. Every page should have unique elements that help search engines distinguish them from one another. Here are those elements:

Unique URL

Each location page should have a unique URL, preferably with the location name. So, if you’re servicing Dallas and San Diego, the URLs would look something like www.yourbusiness.com/dallas or www.yourbusiness.com/sandiego.

However, if you have your stores or facilities in different countries, you may have to go for unique domain names. Take Amazon for example:

• URL for Amazon India: www.amazon.in
• URL for Amazon Australia: www.amazon.com.au/
• URL for Amazon Canada: www.amazon.ca/

So, if you’re serving Australia, you can go for a domain name like www.yourbusiness.au or similar variations.

Metadata (location specific)

Metadata tells the search engines what your webpage is all about. It should always include your location information and target keywords. If you offer landscaping services in Houston, your meta title and description should be like this:

• Meta Title: Best Landscaping in Houston| Your Business
• Meta Description: “Business Name” provides the best landscaping services in Houston and surrounding regions, including Baytown, Beaumont, Galveston, and Huntsville.

Location Name

Each page should include the location name, such as Baytown or Houston, as the page title or the main heading.

Location Address and Map:

All your location pages need to include the exact address of your location. Also, if you embed a map, users can view the location without leaving your website. This improves the time users spend on your website and sends additional signals to Google, further improving the effectiveness of local SEO for multiple locations.

Contact Information for Every Location:

Every location would have its unique contact details such as email address, contact number, and social media profiles. Make sure to include them in all your location pages.

Structured Data:

Structured data is the code you add to your website to provide Google with additional information about your pages. This can help you get found for local search queries on Google. Also, structured data improves the chances of your listings appearing as rich results, improving the CTR.

2. Google Business Profile Optimization

If you haven’t already, claim or create your Google Business Profile. A Google Business Profile or GBP is like your digital business card, essential for local SEO for multiple locations.

You need to create unique profiles for each of your business locations. Here’s what else you need to do:

1. Choosing the Right Primary and Secondary Categories

Choosing the right business category is crucial. This allows Google and visitors to understand what your business is about and also helps your listing rank for relevant keywords.

2. Adding Relevant Attributes

By adding relevant attributes such as “Outdoor Seating”, “Free WIFI,” “Delivery Only,” “Black-owned,” “Women-led,” etc., you can let your customers know more about your business. This also helps highlight the USPs of your business.

3. Adding a Compelling “from the business” Section

Think of this section as your “About Us” page for Google. Here, you can showcase your story and brand personality to inform and engage the users about your business. Make sure you craft this section carefully and include relevant keywords wherever necessary.

4. Publishing Google Posts Regularly:

Google posts are the updates you post on your GBP. They can be about anything, including new offers, events or any other update about your business. This is to engage your audience and keep them updated about your business.

5. Uploading High-Quality Qhotos Weekly:

Photos and videos are a great way to showcase your products, services, staff, and amenities, among other things. High-quality graphics can win customers’ trust and boost local footfall.

6. Answering Questions:

You must respond to customer queries and address their concerns as quickly as possible. This shows that you value customers over anything.

7. Review Management:

Try to get as many reviews as possible from your existing customers. More positive reviews will portray your business in positive light and motivate them to try your product/service.

Also, you need to respond to reviews nicely, both positive and negative. Thank the ones leaving positive reviews and address the issues of the people posting negative ones.

8. Add Products and/or Services to your Business Profile:

You can add your products and services in the GBP. This makes your products/services more visible, accessible and thus easy to purchase.

9. Set-up Messaging:

Another important step to follow is setting up the messaging. This allows your customers to reach out to you and get their queries answered instantly.

By following these pointers, you can optimize your GBP to attract more customers, improve your online presence, and ultimately grow your business.

However, to make the most of local SEO for multiple locations, keep these things in mind when creating multi-location listings:

• Consistent Naming: All your listings should have a consistent name regardless of the location. For instance, it should not be “Your Business Name in Austin.” It should be “Your Business Name” for every single location.
• Consistent Categorization: Every location should have the same category if your business provides the same services across locations. For instance, locations for a business that sells pet biscuits will come under the “Pet Supply Store” category.

3. Consistent NAP Citations:

It’s crucial to manage and maintain consistency across multiple citations of your business for all your locations. This is important because Google keeps an eye on how your NAP (name, address, and phone number) appears on the internet to decide how to rank your business for local searches.

If your citations have conflicting information, it can negatively impact your local SEO for multiple locations, significantly reducing your visibility. So, identify and update your business listings across the web for every location.

You can check your listings out on these famous aggregators:

• Yellow Pages
• Yelp
• Bing Places
• Yahoo Local
• Foursquare

Pro Tip: There are several industry-specific directories for better and more targeted reach including:

• Zillow for real estate.
• Angie’s List for Home Services.
• Houzz for home remodeling and design.
• Lawyers.com for lawyers and law firms.
• Healthgrades for physicians and hospitals.
• Cars.com for the automotive industry.
• Expedia for travel brands.

To make the process even easier, you can use SEMrush’s Listing Management Tool. This tool searches the internet for your business listings and determines if they’re accurate. Just enter your business name and other details, and you can easily identify inconsistencies.

4. Geo-Targeted Keywords

Using the right geo-targeted or location-specific keywords is essential if you wish to get found for local search queries. These keywords are similar to global keywords but are more specific and tell you exactly what the users are looking for. A Common example of a geo-targeted keyword can be “plumbers in San Diego.”

When searching for the above keyword, we get businesses within the San Diego region. These listings appear in the SERPs as they’re optimized for the right geo-targeted keywords.

To get started with geo-targeted keyword research, you can try free tools like Google Keywords Planner or Keywords Everywhere. Also, you can use premium tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush.

5. Local Link Building

Local SEO for multiple locations is incomplete without link building. It is an effective SEO practice wherein different websites (that you don’t own) link back to your web pages.

When you get backlinks from multiple high-authority websites, their link juice/value travels to your website. This improves the credibility and authority of your website in the eyes of Google, which, in turn, helps boost your local SEO ranking.

Here’s what you can do for local link building:

• Partner with another local business and sign up for a link swap.
• Identify local bloggers or publications and get your business featured.
• Find local influencers and ask them to promote your business.
• Sponsor a local event and get featured on their website.
• Get your business published in local directories.

While the process of link building can be taxing, especially if you have multiple locations, it’s worth the effort.

6. Localized Content Marketing

Content marketing and local SEO for multiple locations go hand in hand. More content means more link-building opportunities, engagement, and organic traffic. All this translates to a higher SEO ranking.

However, to make sure you rank locally, you need to create and market content that appeals to your local audience. If you offer landscaping services in San Diego, you can create blogs on topics like “How to do landscaping in San Diego” or “How to Choose the Best Landscaper in San Diego.” You can even create infographics or videos for better engagement.

Once you have the content ready, you can go for email marketing, social media marketing, and paid ads to promote your content.

7. Mobile Optimization for Local Searches

We mentioned a stat earlier that said 78% of local searches on mobiles result in an offline purchase.

In addition to demonstrating the importance of local SEO in general, this stat also proves mobile searches lead to an offline purchase. What it means is mobile optimization is necessary if you wish to rank higher for local searches and convert visitors into paying customers. Here’s how you can optimize your website for mobile devices:

• Use Mobile responsive design
• Simplify your Navigation
• Shorten the Forms
• Improve Loading Speed
• Minify the code and optimize images
• Eliminate Pop Ups
• Test Rigorously

Pro Tip: You can leverage AMP or accelerated mobile pages (an open-source framework from Google) to create mobile-friendly & fast-loading pages. Even a study says Google AMP pages load up to 4 times faster and use 8 times less data than regular mobile-optimized pages. Faster loading speed and less data consumption translate to a better user experience, essential for higher ranking.

According to an early study, Google AMP pages load four times faster and use eight times less data than traditional mobile-optimized pages. The initial idea was to provide an open-source framework that would make the mobile experience not just better, but faster

Wrapping Up

Investing in local SEO for multiple locations is crucial if you have multiple business locations and rely on local traffic. While it may take a lot of effort, you’ll eventually start experiencing higher ranking in local searches and increased footfall at your physical locations.

So, what are you waiting for? Implement the techniques mentioned above and create an effective local SEO strategy for different locations. And if you don’t have the resources at your disposal, you can hire a local SEO agency to handle the job for you. This will ensure better results and save you a lot of time.

FAQs

How do you target multiple cities without hurting your SEO?

Here are the top techniques you can use to target multiple cities without hurting your SEO:

• Create Location Specific Landing Pages
• Create and Optimize Google Business Profile for All Locations
• Consistent NAP Citations
• Target Location-Specific Keywords
• Build Local Backlinks
• Perform Localized Content Marketing
• Optimize your Website for Mobile

How do I manage Google My Business profiles for multiple business locations?

Here’s what you can do to manage GBP for multiple business locations:

• Add multiple locations to GBP in bulk.
• Assign dedicated resources to reach locations for managing profiles.
• Create a review response policy.
• Leverage Business Profile Manager for managing multiple profiles at once.

How Can I Monitor and Respond to Reviews Across Multiple Locations?

One of the best ways to manage reviews across multiple locations is to have a dedicated resource for each location. You can create a review response policy that your resources can follow to monitor and respond to views.