Several businesses today operate from multiple locations, and there are specific reasons behind that. Multiple-location businesses can cater to customers at multiple locations, meaning a greater volume of customers, which translates to greater revenue.
However, with your business located at multiple places, you need to frame your marketing differently than you usually do. Particularly for SEO, things get a bit complex as many do not clearly understand how to perform SEO for businesses with multiple locations.
As a digital marketing agency, people often ask how to do local SEO for multiple location businesses and why it is important. Keeping that in mind, here is a detailed discussion on multi-location SEO and what tactics to apply to make your business visible in local searches.
What is Multi-Location SEO?
Multiple location SEO is SEO tactics and strategies optimized for each business location. In essence, it is local SEO applied to all the locations of a particular business. A business can operate from several locations within the same city, metro, state, or location across the country. Multiple-location SEO aims to bring up your business in searches from all locations. It’s simply taking up local SEO tactics and applying them to all business locations.
Why is Multiple Location SEO Important?
Why is SEO for multiple locations important anyway? It’s important for the same reason local SEO is important.
Any SEO strategy looks to rank your business higher. For local SEO, this means techniques applied to make your business visible to customers with local search intent. And why is that crucial? Let’s look at some data.
- 46% of Google Searches are local
- A whopping 80% of local searches convert
- 97% of people learn about local businesses online than anywhere else
- 35% of businesses feel local SEO is important.
(Source)
What Does That Hint?
It means that if you have done great SEO for the national level but not optimized your business for local searches, you are missing out on a huge audience who are more likely to have a buying intent. Now that’s a great loss for your business, ain’t it?
Now, let’s look at an example.
Say someone searches for optometrist services. If you have an optometrist service and have optimized your page for the national audience, it’s likely that your business will not show up in searches with local intent. Even if it does, it’s likely that they will not avail of your services. Why? Because they won’t be sure if you cater to the local audience or have local operations. Also, if you have neglected local SEO, it probably won’t show up in the Google 3 pack either, all of which will mean that the likeliness that a local customer will take up your services is decreased to a great extent.
The opposite is also true. If you optimize your brand and business for local SEO, it will have a higher chance of appearing in local searches and cant have greater footfall at the stores, build goodwill, and increase revenue.
How to Do Local SEO for Multiple Locations?
So you need local SEO for multiple business locations. Now what? Here are some practical and actionable local SEO tactics for your business at multiple locations.
Create a Webpage for Each Location (with a unique URL)
The first step in creating a good multi-location SEO strategy is creating separate pages on your website for multiple locations with some features for every page, including:
A unique URL with location name: A page with the service location in the URL is a great choice for multi-location SEO. It can be as simple as ‘mybusiness.com/location name’ or ‘mybusiness.com/location/location name.’ This helps users and Google or other search engines learn about the location you are catering to.
Location-specific Metadata: You would want your metadata, like meta descriptions or meta titles, to contain what your business is about and which location you are on or are catering to.
Location name: The location page of your website must contain the location name in a prominent place, such as Title Tag or H2. This should be the city or other location you serve.
Location address: Your location page needs to include your local business address and the map. This will establish credibility for your location page.
Location-specific contact information: Your business location page must include the local contact information.
Follow the above guidelines for each of your location pages.
Optimize Your Content for Location-Specific Keywords
If you do the above steps correctly, you’ll be in a good position to compete. But to make it even better, you should optimize your page for location-specific keywords.
If you have established your page for some particular keywords, all good. If you have not, do some keyword research, include some keywords related to the service you provide, and do all the SEO tactics for ranking your business high.
If you have already done the above, you should optimize your keywords for the location you are providing services to. For example, if you are providing services in Dallas, you should include Dallas in your service keywords. A page with “optometrist services in Dallas” would do much better than just “optometrist services” or “optometrist services in the US” when it comes to local searches.
Create and Optimize Google Business Profiles for Each Location
This is a critical element and a must for any local SEO strategy. Google Business Profiles are a critical component for local search and optimized business profiles are more likely to show up in the Google 3-pack, which has a significant advantage of getting more clicks and conversions. Plus, Google Business Profiles contain important information that can help you win over potential customers.
For multi-location businesses, you should create Google Business Profiles for each location and optimize each of them. For optimizing your Business Profiles on Google, you should fill the required fields up with as much precise information as possible, including:
- Business categories
- Hours of operation
- Service areas (if applicable)
- Services
- Products
- Business Description
Manage Reviews for All Locations
Reviews are a valuable tool for winning new business, but they are also extremely important for SEO. Google looks at different review factors to determine its credibility and authenticity. They look at the number of reviews, keywords in a review, and a mix of reviews to gauge the authenticity of your business.
You can encourage your customers to give reviews on Google or other places to get a good collection of reviews. Good reviews and a bulk of them always help your business to rank high in local searches. And good reviews always help potential customers decide on your business on a positive note.
Conclusion
Ranking your business in local searches is important and for businesses with multiple locations, you must optimize it for all the locations your business serves. Follow the above tactics and rank your business high to enhance brand value and increase conversions.
As a leading digital marketing agency, we are well-versed in all the techniques and strategies you need for multi-location businesses. These tactics are tested and have worked for several businesses before and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t work for you as well.
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