SEO
Local SEO: The Complete Guide
Local SEO is the way forward if you want to get more customers to your local business from organic search.
But what is local SEO, how does it work, and which ranking factors matter?
In this guide, you’ll learn how to rank your business on local search to get more customers through your door.
First, let’s explore what local SEO is, why it matters, and how it differs from “regular” SEO.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of improving your online presence to get more business from local searches. These searches take place on many search engines, but local SEO focuses on optimizing for Google users.
Why is local SEO important?
Local SEO is important because many people use search engines to find local businesses.
In fact, according to Google:
- 30% of all mobile searches are related to location.
- 78% of people who search for something nearby on their phones visit the business within a day.
- 28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase.
In short, customers are searching for your business. If you’re not there, you’re leaving money on the table.
How does local SEO work?
Local SEO is a game of two halves because Google shows two types of search results for local searches. These are “map pack” results and organic “blue link” results. You can rank on both of them.
Map pack results
The map pack (aka local pack) is a Google SERP feature that shows the top local business listings and a map. It often appears at the very top of Google’s search results for local searches.
Organic search results
The “regular” organic search results are the “10 blue links” that we’re all familiar with. They usually appear below the “map pack” results.
Local keyword research is the process of understanding how people search for the local services you offer.
It’s important because you want to optimize for what people search for.
Let’s go through how to do this.
1. Find service-based keywords
Most people don’t think about the different ways that others may search for what they do.
For example, if you’re a plumber, some customers will find you by typing “plumber” into Google. But others will search for queries relating to specific services like “drain unblocking.”
For that reason, you should begin by brainstorming and listing the services you offer. This will help you maximize your presence for queries your customers are searching for.
Here’s what that can look like for a plumber:
- Drain unblocking
- Boiler repair
- Boiler installation
- Boiler servicing
- Radiator installation
- Burst pipe repair
To expand this list, use the service keywords as “seeds” to find more services people are searching for.
For example, if we plug the services above into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and check the Matching terms report, we see keywords like:
- gas boiler installation
- combi boiler installation
- electric boiler installation
If you offer those services, you may also want to consider targeting these keywords.
Here’s another way to find “missed” keywords:
Plug a competing business into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, go to the Top pages report, and look for URLs that map to services.
2. Check search volumes
Keyword research tools show you national search volumes. If you want search volumes for your state, city, or town, you’ll have to use Google Keyword Planner.
Unfortunately, Keyword Planner has its issues:
- It shows broad search volume ranges (e.g., 1K-10K), not absolute numbers.
- It groups keywords and shows a combined rounded search volume.
For that reason, checking the relative popularity of keywords at the national level tends to be more productive. This is because what happens in one city is likely to be similar in the next.
You can do this with a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
For example, the tool tells us that more people search for “boiler repair” than “boiler installation” in the U.K.:
This is probably the case whichever city we’re in, so it’s an excellent way to prioritize keywords.
3. Check for local intent
Local intent means that searchers want to shop nearby. If that isn’t the case for your services, it’s not a local SEO opportunity.
To check a query for local intent, Google it and check the results.
If there’s a map pack and/or some local “blue link” results, it has local intent.
If there are no map pack and local “blue link” results, it doesn’t have local intent.
You can still target keywords without local intent, but it’s not a job for local SEO.
4. Assign keywords to pages
Your homepage is unlikely to rank for all your service keywords. So you’ll need to target some with separate pages.
To assign keywords to URLs, think about which services they map to.
If they map to very different services, such as “boiler installation” and “burst pipe repair,” assign them to separate pages.
If they map to the same service, such as “drain unblocking” and “drain unclogging,” assign them to the same page.
You can learn more about this process in our local keyword research guide below.
Learn more: How to Do Local Keyword Research
You may recall that local SEO is a game of two halves because there are two ways to rank. The first is the map pack, and the second is the “regular” organic results.
Ranking factors vary depending on where you want to rank—but some are important for both.
Below, we’ll look at what SEOs believe are the most important factors for each.
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
A Google Business Profile is a local listing with information about your business. It’s free and allows your business to appear in the map pack and Google Maps.
What SEOs say
In all, 36% of SEOs think your Google Business Profile is the most important ranking factor for the map pack. And 6% believe that it’s important for the “regular” organic results. That’s according to BrightLocal’s survey.
This isn’t surprising, as you need a Google Business Profile to stand any chance of ranking on the map pack.
Business Profile signals are increasing in their perceived importance for the map pack over time too.
Beyond rankings, Google states that customers are 70% more likely to visit businesses with a complete Business Profile. They’re also 50% more likely to consider buying from them. So it’s clear that a complete and optimized Business Profile is essential if you want to attract more business.
Best practices
Many of these best practices come from Google itself:
- Be specific when setting your business category
- Set your business hours (including holiday hours)
- Add your address (if you have a storefront)
- Set your service area (if you visit or deliver to customers and clients)
- Add the products or services you offer
- Add photos
- Ask customers for reviews
Learn more: How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing in 30 Minutes
NAP citations
A NAP citation mentions your business’s name, address, and phone number online. They usually appear on business directories and social media profiles.
Sidenote.
There are also NAPW citations that mention your website.
What SEOs say
BrightLocal’s 2021 study shows that 7% of SEOs think citations are the most important ranking factor. That’s true for both the “map pack” and “regular” results.
In other words, they’re somewhat important—but not as important as they used to be.
The perceived importance of citations among SEOs has been declining since 2014.
That said, citations can still help searchers discover your business online. This is because directories often rank on the search results for local queries. So if you’re in those directories, the people who click on them in the search results may find your business.
Best practices
- Get listed with big data aggregators (in the U.S., these are Data Axle, Localeze, and Foursquare)
- Submit to other big players (in the U.S., these include Apple Maps, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing Places, and Facebook)
- Submit to other popular directories in your local area and industry
- Keep your citations consistent (same name, address, phone number) everywhere
Learn more: How to Build Local Citations (Complete Guide)
TIP
Here’s a quick way to find industry and local directories:
- Paste your homepage into Site Explorer
- Go to Link Intersect
- Enter the homepages of a few competing businesses in your area
- Set the search mode to “URL” for all targets
- Click “Show link opportunities”
This will show you sites linking to one or more of your competitors, but not you.
If a website links to many competitors, it’s probably a directory where you can also add a listing.
Reviews
Reviews refer to the quantity and quality of reviews on your Google Business Profile and elsewhere online.
What SEOs say
BrightLocal’s 2021 study shows that 17% of SEOs deem reviews the most important ranking factor for map pack rankings. But only 5% see them as most important for regular organic rankings.
Reviews have also grown in their perceived importance for map pack rankings over the past few years.
But reviews aren’t only about rankings. Getting reviews on your Google Business Profile and elsewhere builds trust with Google and customers.
Best practices
Many of these best practices for getting more reviews come from Google itself:
- Remind customers to leave reviews (you can create and share a review link in Google Business Manager)
- Focus on getting reviews on your Google Business Profile
- Respond to reviews to build trust (you’ll need a verified Google Business Profile to do this)
- Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews (it’s against Google’s terms)
- Don’t discourage bad reviews or request good reviews from customers (it’s against Google’s terms)
Links
Links act like votes for your site from other websites.
What SEOs say
BrightLocal’s study shows that 31% of SEOs deem links the most important signal for ranking on regular organic search. And 13% think the same for map pack rankings.
For many, this won’t come as much of a surprise. In 2016, Google said that backlinks are one of their top three ranking factors. Plus, many studies have found a strong correlation between links and organic traffic.
Links are increasing in their perceived importance for “regular” local rankings over time too. But their perceived importance for “map pack” rankings has stayed roughly the same.
Best practices
- Get links from other top-ranking sites
- Get links your competitors have (use Ahrefs’ Link Intersect tool for this)
- Get local citations (these often have links)
- Claim unlinked mentions
- Reclaim lost links by redirecting old versions of your pages to new versions
Learn more: 9 Easy Local Link Building Tactics
On-page
On-page SEO is where you make changes to the content of a page to help it rank higher on organic search results.
What SEOs say
BrightLocal’s study shows that 34% of SEOs think on-page signals are the most important factor for regular organic search. And 16% believe it’s the most important factor for map pack rankings.
On-page signals are also growing in their perceived importance for local SEO. You can see this from the results of BrightLocal’s previous surveys.
Best practices
TIP
One way to find details that matter to searchers is to check what top-ranking pages in your area talk about. You can do this by looking at the pages. Or you can use Keywords Explorer to find keywords mentioned on the top-ranking pages.
Here’s how to do that:
- Enter [service keyword] [location] (e.g., “boiler repair london”)
- Go to the Related terms report
- Hit the toggles for “Also talk about” and “Top 10”
Here are some of the frequently mentioned keywords on the top-ranking pages for “boiler repair london” and what they likely infer:
- “gas safe” – Searchers probably want an engineer who’s on the Gas Safe Register, the official gas safety body in the U.K.
- “greater london” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business supplies this service in their area.
- “gas boiler” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business can repair their type of boiler.
- “emergency call” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business does emergency callouts.
It would be worth mentioning these things on your page.
Recommended reading: On-Page SEO: Complete Beginner’s Guide
Let’s bring things to a close with a few local SEO tools you may find useful.
Google Business Manager
Google Business Manager, formerly Google My Business, is how you manage your Google Business Profile. Signing up for it is completely free and is something every local business owner should use.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool for monitoring your website’s search performance. It tells you how much search traffic you’re getting, where it’s going, and what keywords it’s coming from.
Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker
Rank Tracker lets you track up to 10,000 keyword rankings for “regular” organic search by country, state, city, and even ZIP/postal code.
Ahrefs Link Intersect
Our Link Intersect tool lets you find websites that link to multiple competitors. This is useful for finding relevant local and industry-specific citations.
Grid My Business
Grid My Business shows map pack ranking positions for a keyword in the area around your business. It’s freemium and is useful for understanding if and where local searchers are likely to see your business.
Yext
Yext is a tool for syncing and managing business information across multiple listings. It’s useful for keeping citations consistent, although you can do this manually.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool from Google. It’s a useful source of search volume ranges at the local level.
Keep learning
Hopefully, you now have a pretty good understanding of how local SEO works. If you want to dig deeper and continue learning, check out these resources:
SEO
I Got 129.7% More Traffic With Related Keywords
A few weeks ago, I optimized one of my blog posts for related keywords. Today, it gets an estimated 2,300 more monthly organic visits:
In this post, I’ll show you how I found and optimized my post for these related keywords.
Related keywords are words and phrases closely linked to your main keyword. There are many ways to find them. You can even just ask ChatGPT.
But here’s the thing: These keywords aren’t useful for optimizing content.
If more traffic is your goal, you need to find keywords that represent subtopics—not just any related ones.
Think of it like this: you improve a recipe by adding the right ingredients, not everything in your fridge!
Below are two methods for finding the right related keywords (including the one I used):
Method 1. Use content optimization tools
Content optimization tools look for keywords on other top-ranking pages but not yours. They usually then recommend adding these keywords to your content a certain number of times.
These tools can be useful if you take their recommendations with a pinch of salt, as some of them can lead you astray.
For example, this tool recommends that I add six mentions of the phrase “favorite features” to our keyword research guide.
Does that seem like an important related keyword to you? It certainly doesn’t to me!
They also usually have a content score that increases as you add the recommended related keywords. This can trick you into believing that something is important when it probably isn’t—especially as content scores have a weak correlation with rankings.
My advice? If you’re going to use these tools, apply common sense and look for recommendations that seem to represent important subtopics.
For example, when I analyze our content audit guide, it suggests adding quite a few keywords related to content quality.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is an extremely important consideration for a content audit—yet our guide mentions nothing about it.
This is a huge oversight and definitely a batch of related keywords worth optimizing for.
Try the beta version of our new AI Content Helper!
Instead of counting terms that you need to include in your content, Content Helper uses AI to identify the core topics for your target keywords and scores your content (as well as your competitors) against those topics as you write it. In effect, it groups related keywords by subtopic, making it easier to optimize for the broader picture.
For example, it looks like my post doesn’t cover Google Business Profile optimization too well. This is something it might be worth going into more detail about.
Method 2. Do a keyword gap analysis (this is the method I used!)
Keyword gaps are when competitors rank for keywords you don’t. If you do this analysis at the page level, it’ll uncover related keywords—some of which will usually represent subtopics.
If possible, I recommend doing this for pages that already rank on the first page for their main target keyword. These pages are doing well already and likely just need a bit of a push to rank high and for more related keywords. You can find these in Site Explorer:
- Enter your domain
- Go to the Organic Keywords report
- Filter for positions 2-10
- Look for the main keywords you’re targeting
Once you have a few contenders, here’s how to do a keyword gap analysis:
a) Find competitors who are beating you
In the Organic Keywords report, hit the SERP dropdown next to the keyword to see the current top-ranking pages. Look for similar pages that are getting more traffic than yours and have fewer referring domains.
For example, our page ranks #10 for “local SEO,” has 909 referring domains, and gets an estimated 813 monthly visits:
All of these competing pages get more traffic with fewer backlinks:
Sidenote.
I’m going to exclude the page from Moz going forward as it’s a blog category page. That’s very different to ours so it’s probably not worth including in our analysis.
b) Send them to the content gap tool
Hit the check boxes next to your competitors, then click “Open In” and choose Content gap.
By default, this will show you keywords where one or more competitors rank in the top 10, but you don’t rank anywhere in the top 100.
I recommend changing this so it shows all keywords competitors rank for, even if you also rank for them. This is because you may still be able to better optimize for related keywords you already rank for.
I also recommend turning the “Main results only” filter on to exclude rankings in sitelinks and other SERP features:
c) Look for related keywords worth optimizing for
This is where common sense comes into play. Your task is to scan the list for related keywords that could represent important subtopics.
For example, keywords like these aren’t particularly useful because they’re just different ways of searching for the main topic of local SEO:
But a related keyword like “what is local SEO” is useful because it represents a subtopic searchers are looking for:
If this process feels too much like trying to find a needle in a haystack, try exporting the full list of keywords, pasting them into Keywords Explorer, and going to the “Cluster by terms” report. As the name suggests, this groups keywords into clusters by common terms:
This is useful because it can highlight common themes among related keywords and helps you to spot broader gaps.
For example, when I was looking for related keywords for our SEO pricing guide (more on this later!), I saw 17 related keywords containing the term “month”:
Upon checking the keywords, I noticed that they’re all ways of searching for how much SEO costs per month:
This is an easy batch of related keywords to optimize for. All I need to do is answer that question in the post.
If you’re still struggling to spot good related keywords, look for ones sending competing pages way more traffic than you. This usually happens because competitors’ pages are better optimized for those terms.
You can spot these in the content gap report by comparing the traffic columns.
For example, every competing page is getting more traffic than us for the keyword “how much does SEO cost”—and Forbes is getting over 300 more visits!
Now you have a bunch of related keywords, what should you do with them?
This is a nuanced process, so I’m going to show you exactly how I did it for our local SEO guide. Its estimated organic traffic grew by 135% after my optimizations for related keywords:
Sidenote.
Google kindly rolled out a Core update the day after I did these optimizations, so there’s always a chance the traffic increase is unrelated. That said, traffic to our blog as a whole stayed pretty consistent after the update, while this post’s traffic grew massively. I’m pretty sure the related keyword optimization is what caused this.
Here are the related keywords I optimized it for and how:
Related keyword 1: “What is local SEO”
Every competing page was getting significantly more traffic than us for this keyword (and ranking significantly higher). One page was even getting an estimated 457 more visits than ours per month:
People were also searching for this in a bunch of different ways:
My theory on why we weren’t performing well for this? Although we did have a definition on the page, it wasn’t great. It was also buried under a H3 with a lot of fluff to read before you get to it.
I tried to solve this by getting rid of the fluff, improving the definition (with a little help from ChatGPT), and moving it under a H2.
Result? The page jumped multiple positions for the keyword “what is local SEO” and a few other similar related keywords:
Related keyword 2: Local SEO strategy
Once again, all competing pages were getting more traffic than ours from this keyword.
I feel like the issue here may be that there’s no mention of “strategy” in our post, whereas competitors mention it multiple times.
To solve this, I added a short section about local SEO strategy.
I also asked ChatGPT to add “strategy” to the definition of local SEO. (I’m probably clutching at straws with this one, but it reads nicely with the addition, so… why not?)
Result? The page jumped seven positions from the bottom of page two to page one for the related keyword:
Related keyword 3: “How to do local SEO”
Most of the competing pages were getting more traffic than us for this keyword—albeit not a lot.
However, I also noticed Google shows this keyword in the “things to know” section when you search for local SEO—so it seems pretty important.
I’d also imagine that anyone searching for local SEO wants to know how to do it.
Unfortunately, although our guide does show you how to do local SEO, it’s kind of buried in a bunch of uninspiring chapters. There’s no obvious “how to do it” subheading for readers (or Google) to skim, so you have to read between the lines to figure out the “how.”
In an attempt to solve this, I restructured the content into steps and put it under a new H2 titled “How to do local SEO”:
Result? Position #7 → #4
No. Nothing in SEO is guaranteed, and this is no different.
In fact, I optimized our SEO pricing guide for related keywords on the same day, and—although traffic did improve—it only improved by around 23%:
Sidenote.
You might have noticed the results were a bit delayed here. I think this is because the keywords the post ranks for aren’t so popular, so they’re not updated as often in Ahrefs.
For full transparency, here’s every related keyword I optimized the post for and the results:
Related keyword 1: “How much does SEO cost”
Each competing page got more traffic than ours from this keyword, with one getting an estimated 317 more monthly visits:
When I clustered the keywords by terms in Keywords Explorer, I also saw ~70 keywords containing the word “much” (this was around 19% of all keywords in the Content Gap report!):
These were all different ways of searching for how much SEO costs:
The issue here appears to be that although we do answer the question on the page, it’s quite buried. There’s no obvious subheading with the answer below it, making it hard for searchers (and possibly Google) to skim and find what they’re looking for:
To solve this, I added a H2 titled “How much does SEO cost?” and added a direct answer below.
Result? No change in rankings for the related keyword itself, but the page did win a few snippets for longer-tail variations thanks to the copy I added:
Related keyword 2: “SEO cost per month”
Nearly all competing pages were getting more traffic than us for this keyword, with one getting an estimated 72 monthly visits more than more us.
The term clustering report in Keywords Explorer also showed that people are searching for the monthly cost of SEO in different ways:
This is not the case for hourly or retainer pricing; there are virtually no searches for this.
I think we’re not ranking for this because we haven’t prioritized this information on the page. The first subheading is all about hourly pricing, which nobody cares about. Monthly pricing data is buried below that.
To fix this, I moved the data on monthly pricing further up the page and wrote a more descriptive subheading (“Monthly retainer pricing” →“Monthly retainer pricing: How much does SEO cost per month?”).
I also changed the key takeaways in the intro to focus more on monthly pricing, as this is clearly what people care about. Plus, I simplified it and made it more prominent so searchers can find the information they’re actually looking for faster.
Result? The page won the featured snippet for this related keyword and a few other variations:
Related keyword 3: “Local SEO pricing”
I found this one in the term clustering report in Keywords Explorer, as 16 keywords contained the term “local.”
Upon further inspection, I realized these were all different ways of searching for the cost of local SEO services.
I think the problem here is although our post has some data on local SEO pricing, it doesn’t have the snappy figure searchers are likely looking for. Plus, even the information we did have was buried deep on the page.
So… I actually pulled new statistics from the data we collected for the post, then put them under a new H3 titled “How much does local SEO cost?”
Result? Small but notable improvements for this keyword and a few other variations:
Related keyword 4: “How much does SEO cost for a small business”
I saw that one competing page was getting an estimated 105 more monthly organic visits than us from this term.
When clustering by terms in Keywords Explorer, I also saw a cluster of nine keywords containing the word “small.” These were all different ways of searching for small business SEO pricing:
Once again, the issue here is clear: the information people are looking for isn’t on the page. There’s not even a mention of small businesses.
This is good as it means the solution is simple: add an answer to the page. I did this and put it under a new H3 titled “How much does SEO cost for small businesses?”
Result? #15 → #5 for this related keyword, and notable improvements for a few other variations:
Related keyword 5: “SEO pricing models”
This related keyword probably isn’t that important, but I spotted it looking through the Content gap report and thought it’d be pretty easy to optimize for.
All I did was create a new H2 titled “SEO pricing models: a deeper breakdown of costs.” I then briefly explained the three common pricing models under this and re-jigged and nested the rest of the content from the page under there.
Result? #5 → #1:
Final thoughts
Related keyword optimization isn’t about shoehorning a bunch of keyword variations into your content. Google is smart enough to know that things like “SEO” and “search engine optimization” mean the same thing.
Instead, look for keywords that represent subtopics and make sure you’re covering them well. This might involve adding a new section or reformatting an existing section for more clarity.
This is easy to do. It took me around 2-3 hours per page.
SEO
Leverage Search Intent & Boost Your Visibility With These Expert SEO Strategies
Struggling to rank for your target keywords? You’re not alone.
The SEO landscape is more complex than ever, with search intent evolving and SERP features constantly changing.
So, how do you make sure your content aligns with Google’s evolving expectations?
Check out our webinar on September 25, 2024: “Navigating SERP Complexity: How to Leverage Search Intent for SEO.”
Tom Capper of STAT will discuss the role of search intent in SEO and how to use it to climb in the right SERPs for your brand.
Why This Webinar Is A Must-Attend Event
Ranking isn’t just about keywords anymore—it’s about understanding the intent behind each search.
We’ll cover:
- How intent is nuanced, and many keywords can support multiple intents.
- Why the same keyword can have a different intent depending where it was searched from, and on what device.
- The differences in SERP features depending on intent, and how this impacts your content strategy.
Expert Insights From Tom Capper
Leading this session is Tom Capper from STAT Search Analytics.
Capper will dive deep into searcher motivations using first-party research data and provide actionable insights to help you improve your site’s organic visibility.
Reserve your spot and find out more about how these insights can impact your ranking.
Who Should Attend?
This webinar is perfect for:
- SEO professionals looking to take their strategies to the next level
- Content managers and strategists wanting to increase the effectiveness of their work
- Enterprise professionals and digital marketers looking to blend branding, marketing, and SEO for a unified customer experience
- Anyone interested in search results and consumer behavior
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
Following the presentation, Tom will host a live Q&A session.
This is your chance to clarify misconceptions surrounding the intersection of content, search intent, and the SERPs and get expert advice on optimizing your strategies.
Don’t Miss Out!
Understanding search intent is critical to staying competitive in SEO. Reserve your spot today to ensure you’re not left behind.
Can’t attend live? Sign up anyway for the recording.
Get ready to unlock new SEO opportunities and boost your rankings. See you there!
SEO
How to Manage Local SEO for Businesses with Multiple Locations
As your business grows, the idea of expanding to multiple locations and tapping into new markets eventually becomes a possibility. And getting to this point can be exciting for business owners– but it’s also a complex process that involves the application of different strategies, especially when it comes to your SEO.
Managing SEO for multiple locations is tricky. You will want each location to show up in local searches and catch the attention of potential customers in its specific area. And this is where optimizing local SEO for multiple locations comes into play.
Understanding the Importance of Multi-Location SEO
Beyond brand consistency and quality products and/or services (which are always important), you have to consider how your new business branches can be found by an increasingly digital consumer market.
As an SEO expert, I’ve seen firsthand how important a well-crafted multi-location SEO strategy is for businesses, becoming the key to making sure that each location can attract local customers through organic search.
Multi-location SEO is more than just search engine ranking improvements. It is about connecting with local audiences on a deeper level – ensuring that your business is visible to potential customers exactly when they are searching for services or products in their area.
- Improve local search visibility. Optimizing each business location individually with relevant keywords can guarantee that your stores appear at the top of local search results – making it easier for potential customers in specific areas to find and visit your locations.
- Target qualified local audiences. Customizing multi-location SEO strategies to meet the specific needs and search behaviors of local customers can help businesses attract highly relevant and engaged customers, which may then lead to higher engagement and better conversion rates.
- Improved search rankings. Earning backlinks from local websites enhances the authority and relevance of each location, boosting your search engine rankings.
- Competitive advantage. A well-optimized multi-location SEO strategy sets your business apart from your competitors who may not be as focused on local SEO, giving you an edge in attracting local customers.
- More in-store foot traffic. Increased local visibility translates to more people discovering your business’ physical locations, driving more foot traffic, which eventually convert into more sales.
Create Separate Pages for Each Location
Instead of putting together and stuffing all the necessary information of your business onto a single page, separate pages allow you to highlight specific details unique to each location – from local addresses, contact information, down to the services and offerings available at each site.
While creating separate pages, it is important to:
- Ensure that all these pages are hosted on a single domain to consolidate your SEO efforts and boost rankings as a whole.
- Embed a Google Map for each location to enhance local visibility, user convenience, and relevance for local searches.
- Target geotagged keywords and mention the specific city or area on each page to establish your business’ presence across multiple locations.
- Include complete contact details and create location-specific content to help each location rank well in search results and drive more local traffic and engagement.
- Make sure that each of the pages have unique, optimized content, and not identical copies. Avoid simply changing just the city and state names on each page to prevent duplicate content penalties, and ensure a more targeted user experience.
- Add photos and videos to give users a better feel for each location.
Precise and localized information for each of the pages you will be creating for multiple business locations can help potential customers quickly find what they need, creating a richer and more engaging user experience. This shall improve your chances of ranking highly in search results as well.
Optimize Google My Business Listings
Each location of your business should have their own Google Business Profiles complete with accurate details – from address details, business hours, contact information, to the correct website URLs for specific business locations. This helps control how your business is displayed on both Google and Google Maps.
By the time you have created variations of GMB profiles customized to each business location, optimizing each of them follows. This involves uploading high-quality photos and videos, creating posts and publishing updates consistently, and managing and responding to reviews actively.
Of course, it is important that you encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews – and respond to it. This not only resolves issues, but builds trust among users too. It can even help boost local rankings significantly.
Keeping Google My Business listings detailed, up-to-date, and packed with positive reviews, you promote your business not only for potential customers to find and choose you, but also signals Google that each location is active and trustworthy – which further leads to higher visibility and more exposure in the search results.
Ensure Consistency in NAP Across All Listings
Consistency is key—ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are uniform across all listings. With same business names, it may signal Google that these locations belong to the same business, while the address and phone number will let them know they are simply different branches.
The more accurate your information is across the web, the higher Google’s trust in its accuracy, making it more likely for you to earn a spot in the search results.
Create Local Business Schema
Local business schema, a type of structured data markup, is a powerful strategy for optimizing local SEO, particularly for businesses with multiple locations. Schema markup is a further addition to your location pages that allows you to describe your business more accurately to search engines as you provide them with detailed information.
This makes it easier for search engines to understand and display your business in relevant search results.
Gather Customer Reviews
Reviews are successful indicators of effective business strategies, providing potential customers with genuine, unbiased insights into your business. They influence customer perceptions while playing a role in how Google ranks your business in local search results. Reviews are also great social proof because people generally trust what other customers have to say about your business more than the information that we provide on the listings.
It is then important that you make review collection part of your business practices in optimizing local SEO for multiple locations by encouraging satisfied customers to provide feedback, not just on your GMB profiles, but to other review platforms too.
How to Get Positive Customer Reviews
Getting positive feedback from customers may be tricky, but it is an effective strategy for boosting both your business’ reputation and local SEO performance. Reviews like these will ensure that you stand out in local search results while attracting a steady stream of new customers.
- Ask for reviews, especially right after a positive experience. Do not hesitate to ask satisfied customers to leave reviews by asking them directly after a purchase or service.
- Let customers know how easy leaving reviews is. Simplify the review process by providing direct links to your Google My Business, and other review sites that your business is in. QR codes on thank you pages, receipts, or in-store displays can also be effective.
- Respond to reviews. May they be positive or negative customer feedback, make sure to respond professionally. This will show that you value their insights and opinions as much, and may even establish relationships with them. When these customers see that you are taking the time to interact with them, they will feel valued and appreciated.
- Highlight positive reviews on your website. Showcase the customer reviews on your website, especially for each location. This can further boost your local SEO, and may even encourage other satisfied customers to share their experiences as well.
How to Deal with Negative Reviews
Negative reviews cannot be avoided. Yes, they can be challenging, but they also present opportunities to make improvements on your business, and even demonstrate responsiveness to customer feedback.
- Reply to negative reviews as quickly as possible. Engaging promptly demonstrates a proactive approach to customer feedback and highlights your commitment to resolving issues. This also plays a key role in preserving the reputation of your business, fostering trust with your customers, and signals to search engines that your business values and prioritizes customer relations.
- Maintain professionalism. Always respond to customer feedback in a calm, polite, and professional manner, regardless of the tone of the review. Avoid becoming defensive or confrontational, since it may discourage potential customers. Then, from here, address the issue raised by thinking and providing a solution.
- Acknowledge the issue. Always begin your response by acknowledging and recognizing the customer’s concern, and expressing genuine empathy. This helps validate their feelings and show them that you actually mind. Do not forget to offer a sincere apology for any inconvenience or difficulty they have encountered as well, regardless of who was at fault.
- Encourage positive reviews. Even with negative reviews, continue to encourage satisfied customers to share their positive experiences. Increasing the volume of this positive feedback can help in enhancing your overall rating. And the more positive reviews you get, the less impact any individual negative review will have.
Collect as many testimonials as you can, and respond to both positive and negative ones. Actively doing so shows that you value customer feedback, and are committed to excellent service – further strengthening your local SEO efforts too.
Earn Backlinks from Local Websites
Link building remains to be an important strategy for optimizing local SEO across multiple locations. Backlinks act as endorsements from reputable sources that boost business’ visibility, relevance, and authority in local search results – all of which are important ranking factors.
Focus on getting listed in local directories and citations. Create listings for each business location, keeping each information complete and accurate, to help establish your local presence within the area. You may also reach out to local bloggers for guest posting opportunities, sponsor community events, or engage with local publications by sharing newsworthy updates about your business.
Backlinks from local websites drive targeted traffic from potential customers who are geographically close to your locations, increasing the chances of conversions. This local relevance is particularly important for businesses in multiple locations, as it ensures each site gains visibility in its respective area.
Link Your Social Media
Aside from separate web pages, your different business locations also need their own social media profiles. Actively maintaining these pages can boost local SEO through location-specific content, engagement with local audiences. These profiles will also enable you to run location-targeted ads to reach potential customers in each area. Once you have this set up, remember to link your social profiles to your location pages to increase relevance.
Look at Local Competition
Want to know what’s working? Look at the top-ranking businesses in your area. Use tools like SE Ranking, Woorank, and the like to see what strategies they’re using to rank well in local search. This should give you things like content ideas, backlink profiles, citations, reviews, and other opportunities you can apply to your own location pages.
Key Takeaway
Optimizing local SEO for multiple locations really takes a lot of work – a demanding but rewarding process. If we take this approach with these strategies, it will not only ensure that each location ranks well in the appropriate searches but also build a strong digital footprint for your business. The result is a stronger connection with local customers, increased foot traffic, and ultimately, greater business success.
Implementing this multi-location SEO strategy may actually sound like a tricky approach to expand your customer base and drive growth to your business in the online market. But with these strategies that I have laid out, you can tailor your SEO efforts to suit the multiple locations of your business without spreading your resources too thin.
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