How to do local SEO so that your business shows up in local search results (AKA Multi Location SEO)
Many small businesses offer their services in multiple locations in a specific geographical area, but they want to be able to be found by potential customers when they do a local Google search.
There are two types of multiple-location SEO:
You run a local business that has several business locations in different cities. Or you run a local business in one location but offer your services in different locations.
For example, a local butcher has different butcher shops in different cities. In this case, you can still apply the local SEO strategy explained in this article.
You will learn how to optimise your website for your local business so that your local SEO performance and search engine ranking is improved when a local customer searches for your business in a specific town in your area.
Let’s talk about your Google Business Profile (also known as “Google My Business”) first.
Should I create several Google Business Profiles for multiple locations in our area?
Short answer: No!
Don’t create multiple business pages in Google with the same business name. Google will remove these and they could suspend your account. Also, don’t use addresses of friends, relatives or virtual addresses, as this is against Google guidelines!
If your business rents a physical mailing address but doesn't operate out of that location, also known as a virtual office, that location isn't eligible for a Business Profile.
Google Guidelines Instead of just mentioning one location in your business profile, you can easily add several locations or specify a larger area (see Google Guidelines here).
How do you optimise your website for different locations?
Short answer: location-specific landing pages.
A location-specific landing page is a page on your website (that is not hidden!!) that contains specific information, i.e. unique content, about the location you want to target and your services.
Let’s look at an example.
West Lothian is an area in Scotland which has about 10 larger towns. If your business is based in West Lothian, and you want to offer your services in all those 10 towns, you could create a specific page for each town.
Make sure you use the URL correctly, which can encourage people to click on your website.
Here’s an example:
- You run a local business as a wedding florist.
- Your actual business location is in Livingston, West Lothian.
- You also offer your services to all other places in West Lothian: Bathgate, Armadale, Broxburn, West Calder, etc.
Here’s what to do:
- Identify the towns or cities where you want to offer your services (excluding your physical business location).
- Create a unique page on your website for each town or city.
- Don’t hide these pages, but link to them from your menu, for example, you could have a menu with the option “Areas” and then a drop-down of all the towns you operate in
Let’s say we create a location-specific page for wedding flowers in Broxburn. Your business is called “Laura’s Blooms” and your domain is lauras-blooms.co.uk.
Your Broxburn page URL would look like this: lauras-blooms.co.uk/wedding-flowers/broxburn
What should I write on each location-specific page?
Never do this: Create a page, write up some info about your services and add the specific location. Then, copy the page and replace the town with the next one you want to target. Google sees this as duplicate content and might penalise your website.
Instead, do this: Create a unique page for each location you want to target. Include specific details for the area so Google recognises you as an expert about the location AND your particular service.
The money test:
Would you run Google Ads for a specific location and then pay Google $10 for someone to click on a link and show your location page? If your page is really good, the $10 will be an excellent investment to get a new customer. If it’s just a bland page that says, “We do X in Y location,” – would you still pay the $10 for a click?
Create location-specific content on your blog and link to these articles from your location pages.
If you’ve recently worked at a wedding venue or a church in Broxburn, you can write a small blog post about the experience, show photos, etc. Then, you can link to this blog post from your Broxburn page.
Never make your location pages just about the location, but make them an integral part of your website.
What content should be on each location page?
- Show completed projects for each town with text and photos.
- Include reviews from customers in a particular town.
- Share videos about each city.
- Offer special promotions that vary from town to town.
- Post relevant news updates for a particular city related to your industry.
- Show that your business is involved in local events or supports local organisations.
What are the technical SEO elements of a properly optimised location page?
- A title tag that clearly states the location AND your service
- Wedding Florist in Broxburn, West Lothian
- A properly optimised meta description
- We are a Wedding Florist in Broxburn, West Lothian, specialising in floral arrangements …
- Add schema markup for local optimisation or rich snippets. This helps search engines understand your pages better and can display them in Rich Snippets.
- Use the Google Schema Markup Helper to create and add the markup to your page.
- Once you’ve added the markup, do the Rich Results Test.
- Ensure you use service and a location specific keyword in your H1 headline
- Optimise the page text to include natural mentions of the location AND service
- Ensure local content is unique from page to page
- Include helpful information such as your regular and holiday opening hours, any certifications or awards you’ve won and any associations you’re part of.
- Show information about the other areas you’re serving and provide pricing information or a link to your pricing page.
What if there are multiple cities in your area? Should you create 50 or more location pages?
Start small! Look at your area and pick the most important towns or cities – based on population. Start with having 5-10 location pages on your website. If you need more, you can always add more in the future.
10 mistakes to avoid on your local landing pages
- Don’t post virtual addresses or PO Box addresses for each town.
- Don’t create thin pages with duplicate content that are too similar to your other location pages.
- Do not stuff the location pages with zip codes, postcodes, or town names.
- Do not stuff the location pages with keywords.
- Don’t hide your local landing pages in your sitemap or deep in your website structure. Link to them from your top menu.
- Don’t build too many local landing pages, as search engines could see this as being spammy.
- You neglect on-page SEO (i.e. you don’t use title tag, h1, meta description etc. correctly).
- You don’t include links to other pages on your website.
- You ignore the user experience. You simply create a page that mentions location, service, and hope for the best. However, your website visitor will find this confusing.
- You don’t have a Call to Action (CTA).
How do I find out my local SEO efforts are working?
You can check in Google Analytics how often a specific page on your website has been viewed in a certain time period.
In the Google Search Console, you can see how well your local pages are ranking. The Google Search Console also tells you how often your pages were displayed in the Google results and how many people clicked on it. You can check which local keyword potential customers used to find your local page in Google.
