How to manage SEO for a business with multiple locations

21 September 2021

Managing SEO can be a challenge, especially for a business with several locations. See how to manage SEO for a business with multiple locations.

By Kompass International

21 September 2021

Did you know that 30% of all mobile searches are location-related, and 76% of people who use their smartphone to visit something nearby visit that location within the same day?

If you manage SEO and optimize your website with that in mind, you’ll be able to take advantage of a lot of critical search habits.

For example, the fact that 28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase.

To make a long story short, if you know how to manage SEO for multiple business locations, each location can reap the benefits. Here’s what your business needs to know to get started with multi-location SEO.

What is multi-location SEO management?

Multi-location SEO management is exactly what it sounds like—SEO designed to manage multiple business locations. This is a fantastic way for businesses to set up their website to optimize search traffic and user experiences across multiple different locations.

Think of it like this: if you have two locations on opposite ends of the city, and they supply different business services, businesses will go to their respective websites looking for very different things.

You want your pages to reflect that and give your customers the best experience possible.

Why managing SEO in multiple locations is different than managing one

While your business could theoretically loop in every visitor on the internet, you shouldn’t try. The reality is that 46% of Google searches are local. They include searches like “IT providers near me” or “best commercial construction company in London.”

If you want your business to show up in those searches, you have to optimize based on location.

Unfortunately, many businesses use the same strategy—one master landing page for every location under their umbrella. You could do that, but why would you when you could get better SEO performance if you optimized for each location individually?

How to manage SEO in multiple locations

While it would be easy to use a one-size-fits-all approach to manage business SEO across multiple locations, multi-location SEO is more like finding new prospects based on your target. You have to customize your approach based on the target (or, in this case, based on the target audience for that unique location).

Here’s how to do it right.

Benchmark your data and local success factors

It all begins with good preparation. That means two things: covering basic success factors and benchmarking the available data.

While several factors support local SEO, there are three big-hitters each individual page needs:

  1. Indexed
  2. Mobile-friendly
  3. Fast

For example, when checking that your site (and each individual page) is indexed, make sure to check your sitemap. This is a file where you provide information about the pages and files on your site and the relationships between them. All of your individual location pages should be part of your sitemap.

Next, make sure you have data ready to go for each individual location. For example, you should have site traffic from Google Analytics for each individual page, including things like traffic source, mobile versus desktop users, and bounce rate, to name a few. You should also have keyword ranking data for top-ranking keywords on each individual page and e-commerce data if it’s applicable to your business.

Build SEO strategies to encompass all locations

Got that in hand? Don’t pass Go and collect 200 page views.

Once you have your data, you need to design an SEO strategy for each individual location page. That means targets and goals specialized for each unique page.

This will make it ten times easier to manage SEO across multiple locations. Plus, it ensures that you don’t use a one-size-fits-all strategy for pages that should have different performance goals.

When you do this, pay careful attention to location-specific SEO goals (like location-specific keywords, for example) as well as business goals at each unique location.

A practical target for one office may be completely illogical for somewhere else. This may require meeting with individual teams at each location to suss out the data. Don’t be afraid to take your time—it’s better to do this right and build practical goals than to rush and have a strategy that doesn’t serve you.

Build unique pages for each location

If you haven’t yet, it’s time to build unique pages for each location. Once more for the folks in the back: these are not identical pages.

These pages should include:

  • NAP (name, address, phone number)
  • Location-specific content (testimonials, staff information, etc.)
  • Location-specific comments and reviews
  • Location-specific title tags and meta descriptions
  • An embedded Google map
  • Images from that specific location

The easiest way to think of these is not as pages but rather as microsites contained within your larger website.

When you do this, make sure to use a logical URL structure. For example, yourname.com/locations for a list of all your locations, yourname.com/france/sevres for locations in a particular region or city. Add increasing specificity for each location, but keep the URL names simple.

And before you finish, don’t forget to add a local business schema markup. This will ensure that your hours and contact information show up in searches relevant to each unique location.

Your partner in supporting effective SEO

These are just the first few steps to manage SEO across multiple locations. For everything that comes after, you’re going to need data, and you need the right solutions to make that data manageable.

That’s where we can help with smart business data solutions that allow you to take control of your data and transform it into actionable results. Ready to take a smarter approach to your local data? Get in touch today to find out how our solutions can empower your business.

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