Business owners with multiple locations should always keep the needs of their individual locations in mind when planning a local SEO strategy. Keeping your business’s sights set on your customers, and not solely on rankings, is the best way to create a successful strategy.

While local SEO is quite complicated, there are steps you can do to make it easier for your business to navigate, particularly if you have multiple locations. Implementing a local SEO strategy for multiple locations requires first ranking for each individual location and then building up authority of the business.

This is accomplished by maintaining listings in multiple directories, publishing unique content on each location’s website such as an events calendar, and conducting link outreach to local businesses that are likely to have a higher PageRank.

Moreover, if you have multiple locations, it is important to build and optimize your online presence by utilizing tools such as Google My Business. With GMB, you can create a listing for each of your locations so that you can set up accurate and consistent hours and holiday closures. This will aid those who are searching for your specific business by location along with the ability to find your website or a phone number in their Google search results.

GMB also allows other sites like Yelp or Facebook to be linked directly to your location listings so that consumers can see additional promotions or find out more about the business.

In this article, we’ve outlined some of the best practices that can help you get started on the right foot, and we encourage you to build on them as you learn more about how to optimize your business.

7 Ways to Improve Local SEO for Businesses with Multiple Locations

1. Make sure your Google My Business profile is optimized properly.

Obviously, your location name, city, and state or ZIP code will be a key element in helping users find you but this analysis also shows how important it is that you fill out the “About” section for each location, as well as other profile elements such as the business category.

Make sure these are optimized and updated to reflect the different areas where you’re doing business. For example, if you offer multiple services in a single city, make sure each one has its own “About” section. Also make sure that you fill out every detail on the My Business profile.

Google’s algorithms won’t likely look at everything you included, but you never know what could help your local SEO strategy for multiple locations over time.

2. Take advantage of NAP consistency. 

Keep your NAP consistent, and make sure the information they share is consistent across the board. If you manage multiple locations and are trying to market them all through SEO, you’ll want to follow this advice.

It’ll go a long way to help your search rankings when some of your locations happen to be on various popular listing sites.

Adding to this, ensure that you obtain links to all of your locations with great content and on sites relevant to those locations.

3. Put the relevant contact information for all of your locations on your website.

This is an easy way to let your customers know how to get in touch with you. This also enables users to easily find your website and identify relevant locations for their individual needs.

Adding multiple addresses, phone numbers, and emails will help visitors locate you based on their specific locations and needs.

4. Balance your topical content and local content.

There are a lot of moving parts that have to be taken into consideration when you own multiple locations, including local content and topical content.

If you have a small operation, you should focus on topical content . If you have multiple locations, you should focus on local content . The best way to reach both goals is to use a combination of these approaches. But it always boils down to your specific needs. Go with what works for your business and the rest is just details.

5. Manage your reputation.

If your business has multiple locations, you should take steps to centralize your reputation management efforts. It will be easier to track all of your locations, review reputation metrics across the board, and directly respond to problems as they arise.

Be sure to keep some resources at each location in case a problem arises and you need to respond quickly. Set up alerts on Google Alerts for each location so that you can monitor what’s being said about it.

6. Link-building to help boost search engine rankings for all of your locations.

If you have multiple locations, it’s best to separate each one into its own directory (domain) and build a full-fledged site for each. Once you have an established link profile for each location, you can then think about connecting them to the one site that has the most incoming links. As long as the sites have natural links from real people, you should be able to improve your rankings across all of the relevant search engines.

7. Be active on local directories — and make sure they’re consistent!

There’s a lot to keep in mind when managing multiple local listings. It’s especially important that those listings are consistent and accurate, or else you could end up with a bunch of locations that Google can’t properly parse.

Make it your business to check each city’s directory regularly, and use their tools to help you keep everything up to date. That way, you’ll control what gets posted to every location.

Local SEO strategies have evolved with the introduction of Google My Business and Google Maps. The new management suite is crucial to maintaining a positive brand identity as it relates to search engine optimization.

The most important thing to remember is that local SEO is an ever-changing aspect of the digital landscape and it should be treated as such. Your digital marketing strategy should always reflect these changes to ensure that your businesses remain as visible as possible. 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for this, as every business and market is different. But by following the steps listed above, you will be able to tailor your local SEO strategy towards optimizing your assets for each individual location.

If you’re managing a business with multiple locations and want to rank on top but don’t know how to start, our team can help you set the best local SEO strategy.