Optimising your local SEO strategy

A local SEO strategy is imperative to success when attracting customers to a physical store. 46% of all searches on Google have local intent, so implementing a well-thought-out, strategic local SEO strategy is vital when it comes to targeting this all-important local traffic.  

Many businesses, though, must find a way to improve multiple-location SEO (MLS) as they have more than one physical store. Each store shares the same name but in multiple locations, so how can they implement multi-location SEO (search engine optimisation)?

Continue reading our full guide to find out how to master multiple-location SEO.

What is multiple-location SEO?

Multiple-location SEO is the process of optimising the organic search of your business for multiple locations. This includes updating information such as address, phone number, email, opening hours and location on Google Maps.

Why is SEO for multiple locations important?

Local SEO for multiple locations is important for businesses like restaurants or retail chains that have multiple stores within a specified area. Multiple-location SEO offers huge benefits for local businesses as it enables them to reach a larger audience on search engines.

How to optimise local business SEO for multiple locations

There are several steps you must take to ensure your local business has excellent SEO across multiple locations. You must:

• Create unique location pages
• Optimise each page with local keywords for location-specific content
• Create unique content for each page
• Attract local backlinks
• Create and optimise a Google Business profile
• Keep NAP consistent
  

Create unique location pages

The first step in producing a multiple-location SEO strategy involves creating a unique page for each location. This ensures the web page, and business can be found with local searches.

Each page you create must include important information, including a unique URL, location-specific meta description and title, structured data, address, contact information and a name. Ensure you include the location name in the meta title tag, description and URL.

This makes it immediately evident which location the page is for and helps Google understand the intent.

Optimise each page with local keywords for location-specific content

To show up in local searches, you optimise each of the location pages you’ve created with location-specific keywords.

For multi-location businesses, you must target the keywords related to the particular location to show up in the correct search engines.

Conduct some local keyword research to find relevant terms to include in your on-page content. This will include the location name alongside your specific service or product, such as “dry cleaners Manchester”, or “carpet cleaners Bradford”.

Including keywords related to the specific location you’re targeting is imperative to achieving success with a local SEO campaign for multiple locations.

Create unique content for each page

This is an important step. For each location page you create, you must ensure you craft unique content with no duplication.

Google will mark your content down if it’s found to be duplicated from various pages across your website. It will only try to index the page that it deems as the ‘original’ so you’ll lose out on a lot of traffic on all your other location pages.

Try to find different keywords you believe your target audience may search for and tweak each page’s content to ensure it stands out as individual from others on your website.

By diversifying your keywords and creating unique content for each page, you’re more likely to perform well on Google which attracts more local customers.

Attract local backlinks

Multi-location SEO also requires the use of backlinks to strengthen your authority on local search engines.

Plenty of backlinks show search engines that your website is trustworthy and authoritative, which are two essential aspects of multiple-location SEO. Building up backlinks from reliable websites can enhance your local SEO for multiple locations.

You can start by potentially writing guest blogs for other websites, signing up to the local Chamber of Commerce and even partnering with other businesses. Including links back to your website on each of these is important for good multi-location SEO as it can help attract more local customers.

Create and optimise your Google Business profiles

The next step to improving your multiple-location SEO is to create and optimise a Google business profile for each location page. Doing this allows all of your relevant information to show up in a local search and is especially important for multiple locations.

A Google Business profile shows your address, contact details, business hours, online reviews and a clickable location on Google Maps. It’s everything potential customers require to find you.

They can often include questions and answers which can be important for a local business trying to attract customers away from big-brand chain stores.

Local SEO can make a customer’s life much easier, so make sure your Google Business profiles are as informative as possible.

Keep NAP consistent

NAP stands for name, address and phone number.

These are three key parts of any local SEO strategy as they’re precisely what local customers need to find you, especially for multiple locations.

The NAP is the information that’s usually found in directory listings to display the key information of any business. For multi-location SEO, the NAP is imperative to distinguish between your various locations.

If any of the three elements of NAP are missing, it’s noted as a ‘partial NAP’ and isn’t offering as much information as a customer needs. For example, if only the name and phone number were showing, a customer would not know where the store is located, so could not visit.

Keep your NAP consistent across all of your business listings.

Improving local SEO for multiple locations

If you have several business locations and require the use of local SEO to attract more customers from online search results, we hope this guide has helped you.

As explained above, it’s important to offer customers as much information as possible on your Google Business profiles so local search results provide accuracy. Improving your local SEO with all of the above steps will ensure greater visibility on Google search results for each of your locations.

Plus, if you’ve found that a particular location isn’t getting as much traffic as others you’ve optimised, use keywords and a link-building strategy over time to grow it. Make use of Google Business Insights and Google Analytics to find what your customers search for and how they find you.

Contact Paramount Digital

If you’re a multi-location business and require support amplifying your SEO strategy, we can help you.

At Paramount Digital, we’re an SEO agency that has conducted a multi-location SEO strategy many times with great success. We know what it takes to make business listings appear on a Google search, so don’t hesitate to contact us to help your business.

You can email us at marketing@paramountdigital.co.uk or give us a call at 01744 747474.