When was the last time you searched for something “near me” on Google? If you’re like most people, it would have been pretty recently. According to ad network Chitika, local queries account for almost half of Google’s two trillion searches every year.
According to Blue Square Management, 72% of consumers performing a local Google search end up visiting a store within 5 miles. In short, being one of the businesses on the first page of Google in your area could bring in new customers and drive up revenue, without spending lots of money on store advertising.
At Review Grower we enable businesses to get more 5 star reviews, better search engine optimisation (SEO), and protection from negative reviews. We often work with multi-location business owners who aren’t sure how to optimize their online presence, and a multi-location SEO strategy can propel their growth to the next level.
In this article we will take you through what a multi-location SEO strategy is, why it’s important for your business, and our top five strategies to improve your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking.
What Is A Multi-Location SEO Strategy?
A multi-location SEO strategy is optimized around all of the unique locations of your business. Whether you have multiple locations in the same city, or your business stretches across the country, local SEO for multiple locations aims to boost your local SERP position.
Why Is It Important To Optimize Your Seo For Multiple Locations?
For brick-and-mortar businesses, gone are the days when you had to rely on word-of-mouth or foot traffic outside your store. In 2022, a purchase follows 28% of all local searches, so a comprehensive local SEO strategy can help your business capture new customers right when they are looking to purchase.
If your business only has broad SEO optimization, you are missing out on opportunities for higher SEO ranking in local searches. In order for you to become the go-to business in your local market, your business needs to stand out in a local context. Not just in Google search listings, but in Google Maps and on your Google Business page too.
How Do You Improve Your Multi-Location Seo?
When our brother started his own business, we realized the huge impact that local SEO was having, and we set out to master multi-location SEO. Over the years we’ve narrowed down SERP ranking success to these key factors, which form the basis of the Review Grower method.
- Create Unique Website Pages For Each Separate Business Location
If users are searching for stores in a specific location, they don’t want to land on a generic homepage for your business, with no local context. Even if your businesses are exactly the same in each location, your website needs to have a separate page for each one.
When creating your location-specific web pages, try to think of what makes each location unique. Maybe the store has a memorable design feature, or the stock in each location varies slightly.
If you’re not sure where to start with building unique landing pages, you can use landing page builder tools that create high-converting landing pages for you, with a specific focus on SERP ranking. With page builder tools, you don’t need to have web development knowledge because the tool does all of the development for you with easy drag-and-drop features.
- Monitor Your Reviews And Improve Your Ratings
Studies have shown that reviews on Google are the second highest factor that Google considers when calculating your SERP ranking. It’s no wonder why – 92% of consumers say they value online reviews as much as they value personal reviews for products or services.
WIth multiple different websites for business reviews, it can be hard to keep track of your reviews, or know how to respond well to negative reviews. If you don’t have a plan in place for how to respond, it can be easy for negative reviews to go unanswered.
With the Review Monitoring capabilities of Review Grower, you can monitor your listings and respond to your reviews across 80+ different platforms. You can also encourage positive reviews from your existing customers with our easy-to-use review card templates and automated review schemes.
With real-time alerts and a negative feedback workflow, you can ensure that you address any negative reviews. Creating a consistent plan of action for responding to negative reviews can help you to feel in-control and stress-free.
- Include Key Location Information In Website Tags And Metadata
62% of consumers will disregard a business if they can’t find them online. So if a customer is searching for a local business and you don’t have location-specific tags on your website, you might miss out on their purchase.
Even if you have a page on your website for each of your locations, Google won’t be able to find it if your key location information isn’t included in your website tags and metadata. Google uses web crawlers to search through these areas to find relevant keywords, such as the name of the suburb that your business is in.
This includes areas like:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- H1 tags
- Location keywords in your main web page copy
To review your current on-page SEO, you can use our free SEO audit tool. The tool goes over 30 of the key SEO ranking items. You will then receive an audit report, including clear and actionable items to help you improve your ranking.
Tip: try to make your location keywords as precise as possible, without being too narrow. For example, it’s a good idea to refer to the specific suburb that your store is in, but referring to the street name would probably be too narrow. Even if you only have one location in each city, using suburb keywords will help local customers find you.
- Create N.A.P consistency
Another important factor in SEO ranking is how many high quality citations your business receives. Citations are any time where your business is mentioned on another website, and citations can either increase or decrease your SERP ranking depending on whether they are high quality, consistent and accurate.
If the Google algorithm can recognize that many websites are mentioning your business, then it will take those citations as proof that your business is reputable and popular, and will be more likely to increase your ranking.
Using our free local citation tool, you can review your current local citations, and the consistency of the information in them. Some businesses find that even though they may have many citations, the citations aren’t impacting their business positively because they don’t have consistent N.A.P information – Name, Address, Phone Number.
By displaying this information correctly and consistently across your website, social media and other online touchpoints, you can ensure that local citations for your business are using the correct information. For multi-location businesses, it’s important to have unique contact information for each location.
- Increase Your Reputation Marketing On Location-Based Web Pages
Because business reviews are so powerful, using positive reviews on your website can increase your conversations, driving up your SEO ranking. According to a BrightLocal survey in 2016, 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more, so your positive reviews and reputation can be used as social proof on your website.
With our free online reputation review tool you can receive a reputation management score, which shows you how current potential customers are viewing your business. If you would like to increase your reputation marketing in a few simple steps, creating buttons or badges for your landing pages is an easy way to show positive reviews and reputation.
You could create badges like “99% customer satisfaction” or other reputation statistics, or you could include a review widget on your page to show all of your positive reviews in one location. With Review Grower you can access templates and examples with a variety of different styles, or you can create your own with our easy to use editor.
Work With The Experts
Multi-location SEO can be a huge asset to your business – driving new customer acquisition, improving reputation and increasing your overall SERP ranking. When you work with Review Grower, you can perform a full audit of your current reputation, reviews and SEO ranking with our free tools and resources, and monitor your reviews, reputation and lead generation.
With our starter pack you can display your reviews and rating directly on your website, completely free, and choose from 12 different styles that can be customized through our customizer tool. Our other three packages all offer a 30 day free trial so that you can see the power of Review Grower for yourself, and the packages are scalable to fit any size or style of business.
To see what all of these tools and techniques look like in action, check out the Kline Home Exteriors case study, with results like 10 new reviews in two days and an increase of traffic to their website by 25%. SEO and search engine ranking doesn’t need to be complicated! With a few key tools and the right support, you can be executing multi-location SEO and increasing your website ranking in no time.
