Creating A Local SEO Strategy For Multiple Locations
Local SEO is important for any business that wants to attract local customers. People use search engines to find all manner of local services, and you want to make sure that your business gets found.
But what should you do if your business has multiple locations?
This requires a specific SEO approach. Do you create a separate website for each location? How do you optimize your pages?
Here’s a guide to everything you need to know to optimize for multiple locations:
Create Optimized Pages For Each Location
The general rule for ranking a local business with numerous locations is to have one central website for your business and to then create a separate page for each location where you operate. The big mistake is to include all of your location details on one landing page.
Each new page for each location can then be treated as a separate mini-site, and you can optimize each one to rank in local search.
So, if you have five locations, you should create five separate pages for Location A, Location B, etc, and then create one central page that includes links to all the location pages.
Optimize Each Location Page
These pages should all be made up of unique content. While they can follow the same format, make sure you don’t just copy the same content on each page because this can create duplicate content issues. You might want to write unique content about the location, including information about the employees, news for that location, and customer reviews. But don’t cram in the keyword wherever you can because this does not sound natural and it could be considered keyword stuffing.
Some of the main places to use your keyword are in the URL, H1 tag, and title tag. Then just use it throughout the content where it makes sense to do so. You could also use it in the image alt tags.
The pages should also include the NAP (name, address, phone number) for each location, and you might also want to embed a Google Map showing where the business is located.
Finally, once you have created and optimized each of your separate location pages, submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console to help with indexing, which is a good step to take for optimizing for local search.
Sign Up With Google My Business
You probably have an account on Google My Business already. However, if you don’t have one yet, make sure you sign up for this. Then, rather than creating one listing for your main business, create separate listings for each location.
Don’t name the businesses with each location (e.g. “Your Company Name, New York”). Instead, just use your company name on its own. Then you can add in different details depending on the location.
In the business profile, add the unique URL for the location page that you have created on your website and optimize your listing by verifying each location, adding different photos for each page, and listing your hours, which may be different for each location.
Build Citations For Each Location
One of the big factors to consider when optimizing for local search is to use local citations. This means you should find all the main local directories where it would make sense to add your business, and then create a listing in these.
Google checks these citations and uses them as a ranking factor, so it’s worth making sure you get citations in all of the main places like Bing Places, Yelp, and Foursquare, as well as smaller local directories.
One thing to do is make sure your NAP is the same for every directory, otherwise, this can cause problems for your SEO. If you already have multiple business listings, check them over and make sure there are no mistakes.
Work On Your Local Link Building
Backlinks are essential for good SEO. With different landing pages for each location, you need to work on building backlinks to each page rather than just to your main website.
You should also focus mainly on building links to your location pages from other local pages. Local backlinks are valuable for boosting your local SEO, so make sure you focus on these where you can.
To build links, make sure you’re creating unique content for each location and that you’re sharing this content via social media and promoting it to encourage natural backlinks.
Encourage More Reviews
You’ll also need to focus on the reviews for each location. Reviews are important for SEO but don’t just focus on overall reviews, instead make sure you treat each location as a separate entity with its own reviews.
Build reviews by letting customers know that you appreciate the feedback, and over time as you get more reviews this will help with your SEO.
Optimize Your Business For Multiple Locations
When you have a business with numerous locations, making sure you optimize for your SEO properly is essential. Follow the tips outlined in this guide to create separate pages and optimize them properly so that they’ll show up when people search for your products or services no matter where they are.
