7 Ways to Dominate Local SEO Across Multiple Locations

Today, nearly three-quarters of consumers conduct local searches at least once a week. Furthermore, Google found that 76 percent of all local smartphone searches lead to an in-store visit within 24 hours. You need a robust multi-location SEO (search engine optimization) strategy in place for your multi-location business to appear in local search results. 

Multi-location SEO incorporates a local SEO strategy for each of your business locations. A multi-location SEO strategy will boost your local search rankings, help you gain local customers, and improve brand awareness.

In this blog, we’ll detail seven local SEO tactics you can implement across multiple locations for an all-encompassing multi-location SEO strategy. Let’s dive in!

1. Claim and Optimize Your Local Listings

Local listings are online profiles of your local businesses. They’re published on search engines and local directories like Google, Apple Maps, Yelp, Bing, and Facebook. 

You must claim your local listings across all major local directories and remove any duplicate listings — particularly your Google Business Profiles (GBPs) — the most important local listing. Furthermore, you want consistent and accurate information across all listings. 

At a minimum, your local listings should include the following information:

• Name, address, and phone number (NAP)
• Business categories (Ex. Sushi restaurant)
• Business hours, especially during holidays and major events
• Products and services your business offers
• Links to your website and social media profiles
• Attributes (Ex. curbside pickup or wheelchair-accessible seating)
• High-quality photos and videos

Accurate information across all listings can help your local search rankings and conversions. According to Google, customers are 70 percent more likely to visit and 50 percent more likely to consider purchasing from a business with a complete GBP.

2. Create Local Pages for Each Location

A local page, sometimes called a local landing page, is a web page you create for an individual store location or franchisee. A multi-location business might have dozens or hundreds of local pages — each containing specific information about that local store and the surrounding area.

Local pages should contain most of the business information found on your local listings. However, local pages are also high-conversion pages. Therefore, they should contain calls-to-action (CTAs) such as “order now” or promotional sales and discounts.

Below is an example of one of Nékter’s local landing pages:

Well designed and optimized local pages can also improve your local SEO by appearing in local organic search results. These higher rankings often lead to more conversions.

Read our blog post on local pages for more information on the benefits of and how to develop your local pages.

3. Deploy a Store Locator

Store locators go hand-in-hand with local pages. A store locator is a web page that lists all of your local retailers or third-party dealers that sell your products. Below is an example of a Nékter store locator.

Store locators help move website visitors through the customer journey by displaying valuable location information and unique details about each store. They make it easier for customers to purchase online and to contact or visit a local store.

Well optimized and compatible store locators and local pages will help improve your local search rankings and convert potential customers.

4. Implement an Online Reputation Management Strategy

Local SEO experts believe that the quantity of Google reviews and high Google ratings are two essential local pack/finder ranking factors. The local pack, also known as the Google 3-Pack, is a group of three local business listing that appear at the top of the search engines results page (SERP).

An online reputation management (ORM) strategy can help increase the number of Google ratings and reviews you receive, helping boost visibility. An ORM includes acquiring, managing, and responding to reviews. Our research found that, on average, GBPs ranked 1-3 in the local pack/finder have 21 percent more reviews than profiles ranked 4-10.

A high quantity and quality of reviews don’t just affect local search rankings — they also impact conversion rates. According to our State of Google Reviews research report, an increase in one full star on a GBP corresponds with a 44 percent increase in conversions.

Below are a few ways to generate reviews:

You can also download our Multi-Location Marketer’s Guide to Online Reputation Management for more specific tactics on how to gain, manage, and respond to reviews.

5. Generate Unique Local Content

Creating localized content to publish on your local pages, website, and local listings is also important. When creating localized content, you want to ensure your content is optimized and targeted toward local areas. 

For instance, if you’re targeting the keyword “sporting goods store Seattle,” you want to ensure your URL, title tag, meta description, and keywords in headings are optimized for the targeted phrase.

You should leverage local images, including photos of your store and products. You also want to ensure your images have geo-targeted meta descriptions, alternative text, and descriptions. 

Here are a few localized content ideas you can publish to your website and local pages:

• Store and product images
• User-generated content (UGC), such as video testimonials or online reviews
• Local neighborhood guides
• City or area data studies
• Surveys
• Infographics

6. Be Wary of Duplicate Content

When creating this localized content, you want to ensure there isn’t duplicate content. Duplicate content is when the same content appears in multiple places online, such as the same service page on your website or the exact same product descriptions.

Duplicate content can negatively affect your local SEO efforts by confusing Google and other search engines’ indexing algorithms. You can reduce duplicate content by canonicalizing your URLs, redirecting duplicate content to your chosen canonical URL, and discontinuing the creation of duplicate content. If you’re not familiar, canonicalizing your URLs means adding an HTML element that helps search engines prevent duplicate content issues, and specifies the “preferred’ webpage or version.

7. Update Your Structured Data and Schema Markup

Lastly, we recommend updating your website’s structured data and schema markup to make it easier for search engines to understand your multi-location business. 

Structured data is organized or labeled in a format that provides information about a page, making it easier for Google and other search engines to classify and index your pages.

Google often uses Schema.org. There are 32 types of schema. You should primarily use the local business schema markup for your GBPs. 

Note, schema markup isn’t a direct local search ranking factor; however, it can help you appear in the knowledge panel, rich snippets, and other parts of the search engine results page (SERP). Schema markup is code to help search engines read and understand content on your pages.

For more details and local SEO tactics to further improve your SEO efforts, download our The Top 10 Things You Should be Doing in Local SEO Now guide!

Manage Your Multi-Location SEO With the Right Software

Implementing these multi-location SEO tactics across 100s or 1,000s of individual locations is challenging. That’s where SOCi comes in!

SOCi is the marketing platform for multi-location brands. You can use our listings, locator and local pages, and reviews products to execute and manage your multi-location SEO program. 

SOCi Listings allows you to monitor and adjust your listings on all major directories. Moreover, with SOCi GeoRank — part of SOCi Listings — you have a geographical view of local, regional, and corporate-level keyword rankings. This product feature helps you analyze your and competitors’ keyword rankings and local search results and make necessary adjustments.

SOCi Local Pages and Store Locator also help you create branded local pages and a store locator in less than two weeks. These local pages and locator will help boost your local SEO and drive more online and in-person traffic to your local stores.

Additionally, with SOCi Genius Reviews, you can monitor and respond to online reviews. Our integration with OpenAI’s GPT-4 lets you generate customizable and intelligent review responses using AI technology. 

Request a demo today for more information on how our products can take your multi-location SEO to the next level and to learn how SOCi is leading the way in automating localized and multi-location marketing.