Do you have a thriving local business around your area? Trying to create a more extensive service area is hard. The answer to it is to have different locations for your business.
86% of people look for companies on Google Maps. Local SEO is the name of the game for brick and mortar businesses.
If you are trying to optimize for location and get more of your audience, learning search engine optimization is critical.
What if we tell you there’s a way to boost multi location businesses? That’s right, we can help you in your quest to a better local search.
Today, you can’t ignore what local optimization offers to your business. This article can help you learn how to dominate local searches and give you the edge.
Setting Your Local SEO Goals
The first thing we need to do is set local SEO goals for our different locations. Some may feel the temptation to create one domain per location, but that’s wasteful. It’s better to merge all the link juice to a single website.
The only difference will be a choice between subdomains vs sub-directories. There is no real advantage in local SEO for both. This depends on your entire preference on how to do things.
If you’re a small business, however, it’s inexpensive to use subdirectories. It is available into the system, and does not need the more expensive CMS types out there.
Optimize Location Pages To Dominate Searches
What many companies seem to forget is to dominate local search, they need to create location pages for every branch that they have. A single landing page for all your locales will not help your SEO at all.
Every page should optimize location for every one of your branches. Even then, it’s vital not to do a copy-paste job of the details. Work out the contents of your location pages, which may include:
- Business Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP)
- Google Maps Embed
- Pertinent directions of the locale
- Local landmarks for Google
- Unique, location-specific branch information
- Full customer reviews and comments
- Location-specific meta information
- Branch news and staff information
The idea is to make the most out of your local SEO. To do so, you need to treat your city landing pages like subdomains. They need to have their own hierarchy within them.
Optimize location with local business schema markup. Use your meta tags, meta description and everything under the hood for local SEO. Segregate each locations’ reviews, testimonials, content, news, and promos.
Submit an updated sitemaps information to Google to allow it to crawl the pages. This not only improves your locale’s visibility. It can create an improved relevance with all the location relevant data.
Using Google My Business
The next thing that you would need to work on to dominate your local search is to create directory entries. It’s no use creating entries in directories with a small audience pool. The best place to start is nowhere else than Google My Business.
Google My Business is not only free. It is also the biggest directory owned by the largest search engine in the world.
It also is the most used navigation and maps app in the world. It trumps its nearest competition six-fold.
The next option you have is Yelp. It is the most popular business review app. It popularized the 5-star rating system, commanding respect from many audiences.
Some other options you have should be Apple Maps. It gives you a position within the iOS-exclusive users. Another is Bing Places and Facebook, now providing location-specific information for businesses.
To complete your local search, you would want directories. These include sites such as Angie’s List, Manta and Yellow Pages.
If you are within a specific industry, there’s an extra step. You may want to find directories recommended for your verticals as well.
Making the Best of Your GMB Data
To make the most out of your Google My Business information, there are a few things that you can do. For one, make sure to create service areas for each of your business. These service areas are there to create a “border” of sorts to your range.
This also creates the chance for a Google 3-pack position, which is a valuable Google feature. 3-Packs sends your GMB position up to the front page on the top, superseding the number 1 organic ranking. This means once you’re in the top 3 to 5, the battle for the crown should be less hectic.
There are a few ways to stay competitive on the 3-Pack, and most of it is keeping relevant information. Google likes relevant information, so feeding it good, solid and verifiable content can help optimizing location pages.
To further optimize, you would want the NAP in your city landing pages to be like the ones on Google. Exact details are crucial.
Your category should also be consistent across all city landing pages. If you register yourself as fast food, the entire multi-location network should have the same categorization.
Optimize location with insights. Find what are the queries about your business and perform keyword research. Local SEO is all about having your places more accessible on the internet.
Handling Other Business Citations
Handling your business citations are a classic headache. This is true for anyone involved in local SEO. This involves managing your “classified ads” on every online business directory.
As we noted, it’s crucial to not squander your time and money with the low impact business directories. If you have any tools like Moz or SEMRush, a quick rule of thumb is to not deal with low to mid-ranking sites. This means you want to position your directory entry in websites with the top 50 directories.
If you don’t have the luxury of SEO tools, there’s another way. You can browse lists and recommendations for local citation sites online.
The thing is, it’s essential for you to correct any mistakes on your NAP online. Google scans online pages that contain your NAP. Any inconsistencies that are visible on your listing hurts your local SEO rankings.
You would need to check aggregators available online. You can even use management tools for it as needed.
NAP consistency is among the most important ranking factors for local search. This includes areas such as citation volume among others.
Creating Local Search Relevant Content
When you optimize location, one of the hallmarks of good local SEO is content. It’s vital to write unique content that takes advantages of the local keyword strings. Content is still king, after all.
Make articles and content that are relevant to your target market. Optimize for keywords within your population segment and your verticals as well. Writing for the audience rather than local SEO in mind is useful.
You would want to keep up with fresh content as well. You would want to have testimonials and reviews added to each location. Google loves this.
New, updated content is one of the 200 ranking factors in Google, so having as many in the bag is a good move.
Building Your Backlinks
A smart move to do is talk with local pages within your area and build backlinks. It may be a guest post or something as small as a feature on the local paper. It will help much with your endeavors.
On-page local SEO is useful. At the end of the day, however, backlinks are still among the most potent factors when trying to optimize for local search.
Talk to local businesses who are willing to exchange backlinks with you. You can do it through guest posts. Consider talking to your suppliers and create a relevant supply chain SEO.
Tourist pages, local chambers of commerce and government pages bring strong link juice. Many experts still swear by the power of .edu and .gov sites, together with local affiliations.
There’s much to contend with this information, but having a connection to public domains with big memberships and good reputation can help.
Investing in SEO Tools and Services
It’s good to invest in tools or services that can help you with local SEO. The thing is, performing digital marketing work yourself will take money and time off more crucial things.
Tools like Moz Local and SEMRush can help you manage tons of data more accessible. It removes extreme repetition in work, which can make the job less appetizing.
Services are also crucial if you don’t have your own digital marketing team. If you insist on doing it on your own, tools are the least expensive route you may want to take.
Creating Dominant SEO in Your Multi Location Businesses
Local search is all about knowing how to take care of your visibility online. There are a few different ways to do local SEO, so knowing them can help you dominate your area visibility.
If you are not sure how to go further with your SEO for your multi location businesses, you need help. This is where Digital Neighbor can lend a hand.
Digital Neighbor is a group of results-oriented digital marketing people who want to make your business succeed. Our Tampa, FL digital agency brings expertise in local SEO, PPC, analytics and more.
Contact us today.
Let us give your business the housewarming it deserves with our expert analysis. Contact Digital Neighbor and get the right solutions right in your neighborhood.
