6 Best Tips to Optimize Local SEO for Multiple Locations

Local SEO for multiple locations is a website optimization process similar to traditional SEO that allows people searching for a product or service locally to find your multi-location business online in multiple unique listings. It can increase your traffic organically, as opposed to paid advertising.

This SEO approach is easy enough to implement when done by a pro.

However, done incorrectly, a poor local SEO campaign for multiple business locations can lead to poor SEO practices that may result in search engine penalties for your local businesses. This is because Google and other search engines tend to view certain practices as “black hat SEO” that violates their SEO guidelines.

Here, we share valuable tips from our SEO agency in Brooklyn, NY, on how to implement multiple-location SEO correctly to create a winning strategy for your clients and avoid penalties from Google.

What Is a Multiple-Location SEO Strategy?

If you want to attract customers from multiple locations for your product or service, you need to implement a local SEO plan to serve multiple areas.

Multi-location SEO improves your search traffic from multiple specific locations, allowing people who live in or near those locations to see your website at the top of SERPs and access your product or service effortlessly.

For instance, let’s say that you run a pharmacy with branches in various locations. A person searching for your business name in one location on Google will get search results for any branches of your pharmacy that are nearby.

If they traveled across the country later and still needed your services in another city, they would get search results for branches in that city and not those seen in their original search.

In a nutshell, multi-location SEO enables search engines like Google to differentiate search results for various locations. This allows customers in a particular location to access results on products and services most relevant (and nearest) to them.

6 Essential Tips to Implement a Killer Local SEO Strategy for Multiple Service Areas

1. Ensure Your Business Listing and SERPs Knowledge Panel Information Is Accurate

When populating your various business listings on Google My Business, ensure that all of the information corresponds to the NAP citations on your website. This includes the exact appearance, punctuation, and other information relating to your business at that location.  

Any inaccuracies on this listing and on any individual location pages can make it difficult for the search engine algorithm to list and index your business on the Google Search Console. It can also make it incredibly difficult for potential customers to locate your business on local pages, resulting in a loss of customers and revenue.

These inaccuracies can also result in a poor appearance in the knowledge panel of SERPs. Your business listing could show punctuation errors on Google that give customers a poor evaluation of your business.

2. Don’t Skimp on On-Page SEO Optimization

On-page optimization is essential for a great SEO campaign. You’ll need to ensure that your URL, meta keywords, meta description, title tags, H1s, H2s, H3s, internal links, and external links are all correctly created and inserted. Also concentrate on creating local content optimized around the keyword you are looking to rank for on location-specific pages, while avoiding keyword stuffing.

This strategy is not only crucial for local SEO but all SEO to help you dominate your local market.

3. Differentiate the Content for Each Location Page

When implementing multiple-location SEO, you are targeting customers in those locations, so it makes sense to optimize the content marketing for each location page by making it unique and adding location-specific content. You can do this by creating a separate location page for every location where your business operates.

While this may sound tedious, failure to create and optimize location pages for different business locations can lead to unnecessary (and expensive) penalties from Google and other top search engines. Using these strategies for local SEO for multiple locations also shows respect to your customers by considering their needs when they are at a specific location.

Astute customers can quickly pick out a “cut and paste” approach to location pages, which could put them off from buying from you.

4. Implement Highly Specific and Local Linking

Another thing to think about when implementing multiple-location local SEO is building a highly specific linking strategy targeted to your location of interest.

This type of linking will influence your ranking as it showcases how well your site is doing in that particular locale. Use local directories to get relevant links for your locations quickly and effortlessly.

Other relevant links include:

·        Links from any site with the target location in its URL

·        Links from the local Chamber of Commerce

·        Links from the local newspaper’s and other local publications’ websites

However, you should never backlink indiscriminately. Assess the quality of the website linking back to you carefully before you opt for it to avoid negative issues later, such as crippling Google violation notices. Always go for high-quality links if you want an SEO campaign with a high ROI.

5. Don’t Use “Virtual Office” Addresses

A common strategy for multiple-location SEO is to use virtual office addresses. This practice is common with businesses providing a service. They will pay for a virtual office, rent it, and use that address in their GMB listings.

However, Google does not view this strategy favorably. In recent guidelines, the search engine spelled out their terms on the legalities of virtual offices. They will remove your listing from Google My Business and Google Maps for ignoring this guideline.

The only occasion in which Google will allow you to list an off-site location in your listing is if it has staff and customer accessibility during business hours.

When implementing your SEO campaign, bear this in mind to avoid negative consequences for your site, including your removal from GMB and Google Maps.

6. Assess Your Competition (And the Market) Carefully and Aim to Beat It

As with all other business practices, multi-location SEO also requires that you assess what your competition and the market are doing and adjust your own business practices to dominate local SEO. Performing local searches and competitor research on local links and content helps you to develop an effective plan to capture and dominate your market.

This strategy requires a suitable online marketing budget that matches the demands of advertising in that market. You’ll also need to assess the ease of getting quality organic traffic to your website, ease of ranking for particular keywords, and consider how your competition is link building to their website.

How Does a Multi-Location SEO Strategy Help Your Business?

But why go through all the trouble of implementing multi-location local SEO? This strategy has some tangible benefits to your local business, which include:

Attracts Local Customers

Local SEO can help you attract more customers who live in or near those locations. This is because people are focused on getting products or services that are nearest to them as this is most convenient for them.

Consider this statistic: for every PPC on a paid search result, an organic local SEO result gets 8.5 clicks. Local SEO for multi-locations and location-specific content marketing not only increases your business’s online visibility in a particular locale but has the highest conversion of all local advertising channels.

Enhances Brand Awareness

Multiple-location SEO can raise brand awareness by directing traffic to specific web pages showcasing your product or service. This means that when customers search for a product or service you offer using specific keywords, it propels these local search results pages to the top of SERPs.

Apart from increasing brand awareness, this strategy increases sales as customers are taken right to the page they need, making their user experience effortless, which means they’re more likely to buy. You can check how well this strategy is working in Google Analytics, which measures KPIs such as leads, purchases, and other data regarding customer conversion.

Boosts Local Marketing Results

Local SEO for various business locations can also boost local marketing efforts. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! offer location-based data like hours, digital map drop pins, your exact address, and social amenities present at your location, all valuable information for local customers.

New customers can utilize Google’s “Street View” function to locate your business locations. Nearby branches of your business will also pop up on the customer’s search with the directions and website links clearly indicated.

Get Focused Local Search Engine Optimization Services from the Leading SEO Agency in Brooklyn, NY

If you want to grow your business with multiple locations — and who doesn’t? — you can’t afford to ignore these practices. This SEO approach enables you to not only attract customers locally but also provides an invaluable opportunity for increasing brand awareness.

To implement local optimization for different locations without risking crippling penalties from Google, you have to first create a local website and local business listings for every location relevant to your business and then optimize each of those location pages. Then, make sure that you create local listings (Google My Business) and get online reviews (hopefully good ones!) for each business location.

Whether you are running a single-location business or multi-location businesses, now’s the time to scale up and get a focused local SEO strategy that works for you from your #1 online marketing expert, SAAI Consulting.

Contact us for a free consultation with a dedicated specialist to get started on increasing quality local traffic and leads to your multiple-location businesses.

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Before you go, here’s a bit about us at SAAI:

Here at SAAI we do Web Design

WITH an effective page DESIGN-Your website will make people not only want to stay but..LOOK around! ever been to a store where everything was so easy to get to, you NEVER got lost and knew exactly how to get everywhere? that’s what an effective, SALES-oriented well-designed website will do for your business.

WITHOUT an effective page DESIGN-Your website will look like a war zone. People will know they are IN a store but have no idea WHAT is going on, WHERE to go, or HOW to buy IF they find what they’re looking for.

People will leave your website almost immediately, you won’t get the sale, you will not pay rent.. affairs in order… headstone shopping.. you get the idea.

Here at SAAI we do SEO

WITH SEO-Your website will allow you to pay your rent/bills/employees. It’s that simple.

Ever walk into the mall and had NO choice BUT to go through a random store first? well, SEO will make YOUR business that store people HAVE to walk through.

SEO will place your business on page 1 of Google so your product is seen FIRST.

WITHOUT SEO-Your website will falter and fail.

It’s that simple. Imagine your store is located in the BACK of the mall where it’s too far to walk so NO ONE ever goes there.

If customers do not come through your doors, your business will falter and fail… you will not pay rent.. affairs in order… headstone shopping.. you get the idea.

We looked around the net and made sure WE are doing what others are not:

1-We respond to all inquiries within 24 hours.

2-We go through painstaking details on our contracts to make sure all information is clearly understood before we move forward.

3-We ONLY take on about 2 to 3 clients at a time to ensure we give you our undivided attention.

We feel that it is way more important to provide QUALITY service than to meet some insane “100 client quota”

4-The above rule allows us to meet deadlines without issue, ensuring both quality of service and a guarantee that you will stay with us for the long run.

5-To avoid any issues or misunderstandings, we only take on clients that we KNOW for a fact we will be able to help.

If there are issues that will prevent us from providing you with the best service we will simply tell you before any paperwork is signed.

Shoot us an email or give us a call and Let’s chat! 

You can also continue learning about web design and SEO for your website by reading some of our other blog posts below