What is SEO?
Well to be quick, SEO is the tool by which businesses, including local businesses with multiple locations, rank higher in search engine results to improve their visibility online.
Showing up on top is crucial whenever someone searches for a service or product you offer.
It is considered a form of organic marketing. Having your website rank well in search engine results can generate a lot of relevant traffic for your website.
SEO is Cost-Effective
SEO does not require that you spend exorbitant amounts of money on ad campaigns that may, or may not bring you the intended traffic and consumers to your website that you want.
Showing up on top of search engines will generate more business as long as you choose the right keywords to target.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a subset of general SEO and it refers to optimizing a website to rank highly when someone is in the area where your services and products are being offered.
Local SEO for multiple locations is more complicated than single location SEO because there are more addresses, phone numbers, and website URLs to manage.
The benefits of local SEO for multiple locations
Local SEO for multiple locations connects your business to its intended audience, and some of the added benefits that it offers include:
Ranking higher
Search engines know that users don’t want to look for a certain product or service that is based 500 miles from their place of residence. This is why the users location is a local seo ranking factor.
It would be pretty pointless if you were in Ohio looking for car parts online, only to get a list of service shops in New York.
That’s why they recommend products and services within the areas of residence of those searching for them.
Local SEO for multiple locations can help your business be the first thing that a possible consumer sees when they enter a keyword or phrase related to the products and services that you have on offer.
Resonate with the right audience
By doing proper local SEO if you have multiple locations you’ll be able to guide your target market to the right location and avoid confusion.
Grow your business
Getting a website visitor is comparable to having foot traffic to a physical location. The more website traffic you receive the higher your sales will be as long as that web traffic is relevant to your product or service.
How to get started with local SEO for multiple locations
Now that we have established the importance of SEO to the success of your business, let’s examine some simple methods by which you can utilize local SEO for multiple locations on your website.
1. Create content specific to each location
One of the easiest and most common ways of implementing local SEO for multiple locations is by creating pages and content specific to each location your business operates out of.
Doing this correctly will help boost your local relevance. Google crawls your website to better understand your business. Having location-specific pages will show Google you are in that area.
Start by collecting content that is specific to each location in the form of pictures, videos, and maps related to the areas you have your businesses located in.
Use this location-specific content to construct pages that are a reflection of specific areas.
2. Get Reviews with Location-Based Content
You can also get reviews on your local listings such as your Google My Business with location-based content in them. Have your customers include the specifics about their location in their reviews.
3. On-Page SEO
Be sure to also optimize other on-page elements that contribute towards greater visibility for your business on search engines.
Elements such as the page titles, H1’s, and image alt tags will go a long way in getting you greater visibility on search engines.
4. Check your competitors
Knowing what kind of content will work with your local SEO audit can be daunting.
But you can make the task easier for yourself and improve your chances of hitting a home run in visibility rankings on your first try by researching your competition.
This is especially important if you’re new to the arena of local SEO for multiple locations, and a bit nervous you might not get it right the first time.
By simply checking in on your competition who are themselves using local SEO for multiple locations to leverage their marketing efforts you can get a good idea of how to go about it yourself.
This can help you better understand what strong points set your business apart from your competitors, what techniques bring in the most amount of traffic, and most important of all how to get users to complete a task on your website rather than merely visiting it.
5. Stick to one domain
Common logic may push you into thinking that having multiple domains for your businesses based in multiple locations is a good thing, and you probably aren’t alone on that.
But, it is important to remember that each domain is indexed separately by search engines so by having different domains, all the efforts you put into your business’s SEO will only affect that one specific domain.
Doing this isn’t necessarily bad, but managing and updating the content of what is in essence a number of different websites can be time-consuming and we all know time is money, and that’s one thing no business can afford to lose.
To avoid this simply stick to one site, with pages and contents unique to each of your locations.
Like what you see, and you want to learn more about SEO?
If you find this article useful and want to learn more ways that you can leverage SEO be sure to read our other blogs on local SEO. Such as our blog about local SEO for franchises, or this useful local SEO checklist.
If you want more help just fill in our contact form and a trained professional will be with you shortly.
