Published on October 21, 2022
As a business with multiple locations, optimizing for localized search results is critical. It ensures customers can quickly find your branch when they search for your services.
Local SEO involves optimizing your website and online presence for specific geographic areas by including location-based keywords and building backlinks from local sources. Not only does this help customers in the respective regions find your business more quickly, but it also helps to boost your overall search rankings.
Local SEO is crucial in driving foot traffic to brick-and-mortar businesses with multiple locations in an increasingly digital world. Ignoring its importance could mean missing out on potential customers in your backyard.
This blog post will give you tips and tricks on how to implement local SEO for each location.
One of the most critical aspects of local SEO is optimizing your Google My Business listings. Your locations should be listed on your GMB page with accurate and up-to-date information.
This includes your hours of operation, address, phone number, website URL, and more. The more information you can provide, the better. You can also further optimize your GMB listing by adding images and videos.
You should also encourage your customers to leave reviews, preferably talking about your services.
Another essential tactic to optimize your local SEO is to create localized content. This means making content that is specific to each location. For example, if you have a blog post about the best things to do in Los Angeles, you would want to include a section specifically about the things to do near each of your LA-based locations.
If you’re operating in international markets, you must translate important site elements into the local language. This includes title tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and URLs. Understand the local custom and adapt your copy to match the common terms used by your audience. Make sure also to incorporate local terms as keywords in your content.
You’d also want to use geotargeting by formatting your URL structures to reflect the market you’re serving. Finally, don’t assume all countries use Google as the primary search engine. Some, like China and Russia, use other search engines like Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia). Optimizing for the right search engines is important.
In addition to optimizing your GMB listing, another great way to boost your local SEO is to get listed in as many local directories as possible. Many online and offline directories cater specifically to businesses in certain geographic areas.
Getting listed in these directories will help improve your visibility and, in turn, help improve your local SEO. When listing with these directions, ensure your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is consistent for every location. Don’t risk confusing your customers by adapting different abbreviations or making careless typo mistakes with suite or building numbers.
Citations are great at directing customers to your business (and building website authority), but confusing information will cause more harm than good.
Regularly check these directories to ensure information is updated and if you change any website links, then edit them.
It's important to monitor your reviews across all platforms—not just Google but also Yelp, Facebook, and more. Customers frequently use online reviews when making purchasing decisions, so you must pay attention to what people are saying about your business.
Responding promptly and professionally to positive and negative reviews can help improve customer satisfaction and SEO results.
When it comes to local search engine optimization, having unique pages for each location can be highly beneficial. These pages provide opportunities for specific keywords and allow you to customize content for that particular location.
It also helps with review management, as customers can leave reviews for the location they visited instead of all branches being lumped together on one page. In addition, having separate location pages allows for better tracking of performance and conversion rates for each location.
When optimizing location-specific pages, pay attention to the URL structure. Make sure they are logical and easy to follow. Google and users would appreciate it if URL structures were thoughtfully created since they immediately know that you have multiple locations and they are on the right page.
You can also implement schema and structured markup for these pages. Use a site like Schema.org or other structured data generators to create markups for the page’s address and hours. This increases the chances for Google to find and rank your page.
Local SEO is a great way to drive more customers to your various business sites. Whether you have one or hundreds of branches, don’t neglect to implement local SEO best practices for each.
By following these tips, you can help ensure that your local SEO is optimized for multiple locations—helping you attract more customers and grow your business.
Learn how you can further optimize your website with the SEO resources on Blissdrive.
