One of the most effective ways for local businesses to reach more prospective customers online is to pay attention to their Local SEO.
If you’re new to Local SEO, it’s essentially a range of practices and optimisation strategies that help you to establish a good presence for your business in the major search engines.
These tools and techniques are vital to help local businesses reach the enormous proportion of search users who use local keywords in their online searches.
So, there are many advantages to following the best practices for good Local SEO strategies. However, for those businesses with multiple locations, local search engine optimisation presents some additional challenges and a few extra things to bear in mind.
In this short guide, we’ll explore the business benefits of ranking well in local search results, as well as a few advanced ideas and nuances, such as the Map Pack and the issue of multiple locations.
Why Multi-Location SEO Matters
If your multi location business has multiple locations, you have multiple opportunities to tap into the vast potential of local searches, and the power of maps results. However, this potential also comes with an extra layer of complexity, in terms of a good Local SEO strategy.
This is why it’s important to adapt general practices for ranking well in local searches, and taking extra steps to ensure that your customers find the right locations for your business. After all, you don’t want your premises in one region to show up for local search customers hundreds of miles away.
By taking steps to ensure your business has a strong presence in multiple regions, you can boost both brand awareness and sales. For example, a small chain of restaurants with a number of locations will need to pay attention to multi-location SEO if it wants to reach the right potential customers in the location nearest to them. This extra effort will pay off in terms of increased visibility in local searches, as well as heightened brand awareness and a streamlined user experience – something that is always beneficial for overall SEO.
Creating Location-Specific Pages
One of the key principles of a good multi-location SEO strategy is to have a unique page on your website for each of your business locations, and the URL of each page should also include the city or location.
Once you’ve set up these pages, make sure that they each include the key details required for local SEO, such as Name, Address, Phone Number (known as NAP), as well as helpful info such as opening hours and what services are available.
As with any kind of SEO strategy, it’s important to optimise the metadata for each page, ie title and meta description, but you should also go a step further by including relevant local keywords.
It’s also important that each page has unique content, ie different for each location page. This will help to avoid duplication penalties. Some ideas for unique content are things like local news, customer reviews, and specific service offerings tailored to that location or region.
Optimising Google Business Profiles for Each Location
As well as multiple pages on your site to represent each location, it’s important to set up individual Google Business Profiles for each local business as well.
While the location details will naturally be different to the other profile pages, aim to ensure consistency in business information across all profiles as much as possible.
It can be a good idea to encourage local reviews for each profile, and to interact with customers in each region.
If you’re managing multiple locations, look into using Google’s bulk upload option to help you save time in creating your various profiles.
Targeting Location-Specific Keywords
As with any local SEO strategy, you’ll want to use location-specific keywords in your campaigns. This is especially important in multiple location SEO, which targets each specific business location individually. There are two different types – explicit and implicit.
Explicit keywords include a specific location, e.g., “plumber London”.
Implicit keywords use a generic keyword that can be used anywhere, but will generate results relevant to the location of the search user. The more popular one by far is the key phrase ‘near me’. So, an implicit version of our example keyword would be “best plumber near me”.
To find out the most relevant and worthwhile terms and phrases for your business, invest in good keyword research. Do this for each location to find high-volume, low-competition terms, and make sure to use local phrases naturally in headings, body content, and image alt text on each page.
Developing Localised Content for Each Region
Beyond the basics, you can also develop localised content for each region or location. These could include blog posts and FAQs targeting local interests or needs. Or you might like to use local events, collaborations, and community involvement to build relevant content.
Consider publishing user-generated content, like customer reviews, and locally relevant case studies, which can all help to establish a strong presence in local search results, as well as building connections with people in the relevant regions.
Earning Local Backlinks and Citations
As with any SEO campaign, backlinks can play a key part in your success. When your business has multiple locations, it can be beneficial to secure backlinks from local sites in each area. For example, can you get a link from any local publications, chambers of commerce, and industry-relevant sites?
Getting listed on local directories can also boost authority, ensuring you maintain consistent NAP details as much as possible. Aim to build citations for each location, and ensure that all business data matches across your entire online presence.
Managing Reviews for Multiple Locations
Online reviews can be a highly effective way to boost ranking and credibility, and this strategy can be implemented for each location. As part of your multi-location SEO campaign, encourage satisfied local customers to leave reviews in the relevant profile for each region, and make sure you respond to negative feedback promptly.
Track reviews across all platforms (Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor) for each location and use them as localised content on the site.
Summary
To benefit from the massive potential of local search, multi-location businesses need to bear in mind a few extra steps and issues in their SEO campaigns.
These include;
- Creating individual location pages
- Optimising the Google business profile for each location
- Targeting location-specific keywords
- Developing localised content for each keyword
- Earning local backlinks and citations
- Managing reviews for multiple locations
As well as taking these initial steps, it’s vital to monitor and analyse results, and to update your Local SEO strategy regularly.
If you’d like some professional advice or support these advanced strategies, get in touch with us today to discuss how we can help you take advantage of the enormous potential of Local SEO for business with multiple locations.