Whether your business has two locations or two thousand, local SEO will make a difference in customer traffic. But the bigger the scale, the more daunting SEO for multi-location businesses becomes. But does it have to?
We say no. In fact, we believe anyone armed with the right knowledge, the right martech tools, and a few best practices can skyrocket their business’s online visibility. Below, we explore best practices for SEO for multi-location businesses designed to launch your brand and customer engagement to new heights.
SEO for multi-location businesses is the optimization of your search result rankings across all of your store locations. It’s the process of making sure people find your business when they search for relevant local services or products.
It’s not that different from normal SEO, but there are extra steps involved to ensure the correct locations and relevant information appear for customers and draw clicks.
Local SEO plays a big role in driving visibility and bringing traffic to individual locations. People make a lot of online searches – so many that, according to a 2021 survey from Milestone Research, local-specific searches constitute nearly 23% of all website traffic.
This isn’t just important for web-based businesses, either. More and more, people discover brick-and-mortar stores like restaurants and retail chains through search engines. Reaching more customers online means bringing in more customers offline, and that conversion often hinges on optimized local SEO.
Though multi-location SEO is not fundamentally different from regular SEO, it does have its own challenges that require a tailored approach.
Multi-location SEO strategies may have to contend with:
Fortunately, each of these can be addressed with the proper practices.
With the right knowledge and strategies in place, it’s more than possible to rank highly for multiple locations on Google.
If you want any and all of your locations to show up on Google Maps, you have to have your GBP in order. The process is straightforward, but should be handled carefully nonetheless. You can bulk add locations, which makes things faster, but verify everything looks correct when you do.
It’s critical that all of your stores are listed with accurate and consistent information on your GBP. This will make sure customers will always find you when they search, and will always find the location nearest to them.
While we’re on the topic of online directories like GBP, make sure any other listings for your business and locations are consistent. Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) for every location need to be up-to-date and correct wherever they’re available, to maximize leads and draw in customers.
Even tiny inconsistencies like saying Street instead of Drive in an address can confuse and mislead search engines and customers alike.
Having location-specific landing pages on your central website is a great way to keep your web presence organized and understandable. Combining these landing pages with internal linking on your site will help customers find relevant content and information for where they live.
These elements combined will make your site more navigable and keep customers on your site longer, leading to more conversions.
On-page SEO refers to elements that readers will actually see on your website. Making sure location-specific keywords, such as city or state names, appear in your content will help your site rank higher for those local searches.
Having landing pages for each location is one example, but you can use location-specific on-page SEO in things like:
No matter how you implement local SEO, be sure to avoid keyword stuffing. The most effective SEO is the kind that is natural and readable. Google will reward this kind of content and bury the kind that is jam-packed with keywords to the point that no one reads it.
Speaking of readable things, having high-quality and relevant content is a pillar of any SEO strategy. Relevance is especially important with multi-location businesses. Try to avoid bloating on your website with content that is duplicated for every location you have.
It takes more than swapping out the city and state on a post to make content relevant for local SEO searches. In fact, Google often slaps websites that do this with a duplicate content penalty, which harms ranking results.
Do what you can to make sure any content you publish for a specific location is tailored. This is more work upfront, but it will pay dividends on the back end with increased search traffic.
Bringing in reviews for your individual locations isn’t the easiest thing to do, but it makes a worthwhile difference for your local SEO rankings. Customers are most likely to leave a review after having a positive experience, so it’s important to leverage that time window.
Try using calls to action (CTAs) for customers to leave reviews after visiting your location in person or online. Here are some tried and true ideas for local review CTAs:
And, if the occasional bad review rolls in, don’t panic. Negative reviews can be opportunities to respond well to the complaint and address the issue from a positive position. Doing so can build rapport with others who find the negative review, and may even turn things around with the original reviewer.
With so many searching for local services and products, competition can be fierce. Many multi-location businesses turn to marketing technology (martech) partners to give their local SEO a boost and take the stress off.
PowerChord works with businesses to offer budget-friendly, best-in-class local martech. We can help organize and correct directory listings, track calls to improve marketing results, convert clicks into sales opportunities across all locations, and safeguard your business’s reputation with AI-powered Review Management.
Without the necessary tools, optimizing your local SEO might feel impossible. If you’re looking for a jump-start to your multi-location marketing strategy, PowerChord can deliver everything you need in one place.
Don’t miss out on your potential for location growth and organic customer connections. Chat with us today about how PowerChord can simplify and streamline your local marketing.