How to Do Local SEO for Multiple Locations (2024)

Ranking in local search results is crucial for driving online traffic to your website and foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar stores.

However, optimising your SEO for multiple locations can be tricky.

You essentially need to create a local SEO strategy for each location you want to target.

Doing keyword research, creating content, and building links for 10, 20 or even 100+ locations can sound overwhelming.

But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

We’ve done multi-location SEO for a number of our clients, so we know the ins and outs of this process.

This comprehensive guide breaks down key local SEO tactics in simple steps so you can effectively promote each of your locations online.

With a tailored strategy for each of your locations, you can stand out in local search and map listings across multiple cities and regions.

This means more quality traffic finding your business locations near them, more customers walking through your doors, and more local SEO success.

Our actionable local business SEO tips will help you:

Create dedicated and optimised location pages
Produce locally-focused content
Build local links
Claim and manage listings
Get more positive local reviews
Appear prominently in local pack results.

But before we start — are you stuck with local SEO? Request a free website and marketing review from the team at Exposure Ninja, and we’ll untangle your SEO and help you rank in multiple locations.

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We’ve helped several businesses rank for more than one location.

Here’s how we helped Patino Law Firm dominate the search results for a location important to their business.

Create Location Pages

Creating individual pages for each location and service/location combination you want to target is a must if you want to do successful local SEO for multiple locations.

These pages signal that your business is relevant to searchers in those locations and offer a more personal experience to site visitors from that location.

This Texas location page from Patino Law Firm references stats specifically from Texas, making it more relevant to the reader. It also signals to Google that this business is based in Texas.

This page from our client, Regain Hearing, takes a slightly different approach, which is just as effective. It includes a photo of the staff from the specific branch being discussed on the page, and further up, includes the address and phone number for that specific location.

The location keyword of “Eltham” is naturally used throughout the text. It’s not shoved in there clumsily or used too many times.

The page also links to the location on Google Maps, giving Google even more information about the place this page is connected to.

How to structure a URL for multiple locations

URL structure doesn’t need to be a complex topic.

In its simplest form, a well-structured URL for local SEO would be business.com/location.

This is clear to Google and to the website visitor.

Even if you have multiple locations in one city, you can create pages for each without complicated URLs.

Take the supermarket Tesco as an extreme example. It will have multiple stores in one city but still manage to keep the URLs straightforward. Here are some different URLs for its stores in Nottingham.

What about “near me” searches?

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Google’s algorithm is smart.

It understands that if a person with their location set to Exeter searches for “Thai food near me”, they want to see Thai restaurants in Exeter, not the ones on the other side of the country that have optimised for the search term “near me”.

Even better than that, it shows them places that are physically closest to them. If you have the best SEO but are located 20 minutes away, then the business that’s five minutes away is more likely to rank higher for that specific search.

As long as you’re doing the work to rank for your specific locations, Google will handle the “near me” searches when someone near one of your locations makes a vague search.

Target Location-Specific Keywords

Location-specific keywords are another crucial part of local SEO.

They can be more challenging to find than keywords that don’t focus on a location, as they’re likely to be searched less. But this doesn’t mean that they’re not worth targeting.

Some keyword tools might even tell you that no one is searching for your local keywords, even if you know that people are.

Each location-focused page needs to target keywords based on the location covered on the page.

It can be tempting to try and target broader keywords with these pages. This might help you get traffic but could result in low conversions if visitors aren’t located in the area the page is focused on.

Local Content Creation

Creating local content tailored to each location helps to boost relevance and engagement.

This could involve writing a blog post highlighting community events or local news relevant to your business and each specific location.

For instance, if you run a cafe, you could create a guide to “The Best Local Coffee in [Locality]” for each city where you have a location, like this one from Bridge Coffee Roasters.

A lot of people have incorrect assumptions when it comes to duplicate local content.

Google determines duplicate content based on the intent, not just the copy, so using the same copy for different locations, with the location name changed, will work and will not be penalised.

This is because it’s for a different audience (location) so it is not duplicating the purpose of the pages.

This can help you get content up if you have a lot of locations/services to cover, but they should be updated when possible to include location-specific content.

How to find local content topics

Creating local content might be daunting to start with, but it’s not that different to choosing more general topics.

If you’re stuck finding topics to springboard off, then follow this video guide:

Social media for local SEO

Although social media doesn’t directly impact your local SEO, it can help you connect with people based in your locations, boosting website traffic to local pages and helping you climb the ranks.

Use local hashtags and share useful or entertaining content, depending on your audience and their preferences.

Some businesses also opt to have separate social media accounts for their different locations, which gives viewers a fully local experience.

The Gym Group is an example of a business that does this on a huge scale. Below are two different accounts for two separate The Gym Group gyms in the same city.

The information in the bios is similar but includes different addresses and contact options. The images and videos shared are of each gym, meaning users can see what they’ll get at the gym local to them.

Optimise for the Google Map Pack

Every business wants to appear in the map pack for local searches. It’s often the first place searchers look to see how close your business is.

To appear in the map pack, you must have a solid Google Business Profile.

Can I have more than one Google Business Profile for my business?

If you have multiple physical locations, you can have more than one Google Business Profile, meaning you have more chances to appear in the map pack for local searches.

If you service a local area but aren’t based there, you can’t create a Google Business Profile for that location. You’ll be less likely to appear in the map pack.

That’s why you must have a solid local content strategy in place for each location you’re targeting.

Google Business Profile insights

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is for more than just ranking. It also helps you get some great insights, which can help you rank even higher and help you improve your profile so that potential customers can find you more easily in search.

The most important GBP metric you need to pay attention to for SEO is searches.

These are the searches your Google Business Profile appeared for. Using this data, you can check if you appear for the correct keywords. If you’re appearing for keywords you don’t want to be, you can make adjustments.

The importance of other metrics is very dependent on your business. If you offer bookings and the other business profiles appearing in the map pack for your target searches have the booking option enabled, you need to do this, too.

Customer reviews and their impact on local SEO

Customer reviews are an important element of local SEO.

Google wants its users to have a good experience, so it’s going to send users to sites with lots of good reviews.

It’s important for businesses with multiple locations to actively manage and respond to reviews across all of your locations and the various platforms on which you are listed.

Positive customer reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook also act as social signals that can boost a local business’s rankings in local search results. And, of course, negative reviews can have the opposite effect.

By monitoring and responding professionally to customer feedback on all sites and for all locations, you can reduce the impact of negative reviews, show customers you value their opinions, and ultimately build a strong online reputation that will benefit your local SEO.

Regularly asking for reviews for each location also helps generate more positive customer testimonials.

Keeping a close eye on reviews for all your business locations is essential for local SEO and can have a big impact on your conversion rates, too.

Link Building for Multiple Locations

Link building in any relevant, quality publication is useful to your business, but you will get even better results if you build links to sites that serve the same areas as your business.

Having your business name and location mentioned and linked from trusted sites focusing on that specific city or region shows Google that your business actively operates and serves customers in that area while also proving that authoritative publications want to link to your awesome website.

Backlinking doesn’t just impact local SEO. It also helps you reach local people who are reading these publications, which could lead to business.

When it comes to local link building, our SEO and Digital PR teams look at popular local publications. Towns and cities often have local news websites — sometimes more than one. They may also have city guides, regional magazines, local radio station websites, directories and more.

The example below shows multiple car rental companies with locations across the UK being linked to by the University of Leeds micro-site dedicated to helping those relocating to Leeds for university.

This is a very high-value domain which will help with SEO, and the links are likely to get clicks from people interested in hiring a car. Double win.

You can also get links and exposure to local people through sponsoring local sports teams, theatre productions or events.

Digital PR and link-building outreach isn’t easy. You need to be persistent and find ways to stand out from all the other businesses getting in touch with the same publications.

To help you get started, you can download our free outreach templates or request a free website and marketing review to get pointers on how to scale your local link-building strategy.

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Mobile Optimisation

Mobile optimisation is an important aspect of all SEO, not just local SEO.

Ignoring it could mean you drop in the search rankings.

Why? Mobile usage exceeds desktop usage. More searches now happen on mobile devices than on desktops, so Google favours mobile-friendly sites in rankings.

It favours them so much that Google only uses the mobile version of a site’s content to index and rank pages. They don’t look at your desktop version anymore.

Also, most searches for local businesses and services happen on mobile. Mobile optimisation helps make local content more accessible to these searchers.

So, how can you optimise for mobile?

Improve your page speed. Slow mobile page speeds can negatively impact rankings. Optimising for mobile helps pages load faster.
Improve your user experience. Poor mobile UX leads to higher bounce rates and fewer pages viewed per visit, which are ranking factors. Good mobile UX improves engagement metrics.
A mobile site shows authority. Having a dedicated mobile site signals to Google that you understand mobile user needs versus just responsive design.

Optimising for mobile is also important for future-proofing. As mobile continues to dominate, non-mobile-friendly sites will steadily decline in rankings. Building for mobile now future-proofs your SEO.

Check Directory Listings Are Consistent

Checking your directory listings are consistent and fully up-to-date is a quick win when you’re doing local SEO for multiple locations.

You may have added details to a local directory for your main location but recently opened a new location that’s more relevant to that directory. You can also add both locations to the directory if it covers the same area.

Check that your business name, address and phone number (also known as NAP) are consistent and accurate across all directories.

This will help Google connect your business to these directories and locations. It’s another signal that you are located where you say you are and that your business is relevant to people searching in that area.

Structured Data for Local Businesses

Structured data is important for your local businesses’ SEO because it allows Google to better understand your business information and display it prominently in search results.

Here is some of the main structured data you should be using, depending on your business:

Business name, address and contact info — By marking up this info with schema.org, it can appear in knowledge panels in SERPs, helping users easily find and contact you.

Opening hours — Marking up opening hours allows Google to display live updated business hours in the knowledge panel, avoiding wasted visits if you’re closed.
Location — Allows you to specify your location to Google. They will read your location from clues on the page, but this allows you to communicate it directly. This can be set either as an address, latitude and longitude coordinates or both.
Service Area — Allows you to specify the area covered by your service. This can be based on a distance from your location. For example, a 10-mile radius from the office or a pre-defined area, such as Berkshire (a county) or Nottingham (a city). Multiple service areas can be set, such as the counties of Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, etc.
Menus — Restaurant menus marked up in schema can appear directly in SERPs, helping users quickly browse your offerings.
Reviews — Review snippets can be generated from marked-up customer reviews, giving you more credibility.
Events — Schema for events enables rich event listing in SERPs that users can quickly add to their calendars. This is especially useful for businesses offering classes, activities or events.
FAQ Page — Marking up FAQs provides users with direct answers to common questions without needing to visit your site.

Structured data can generate rich search features when used correctly. This helps searchers engage with your business and trust you more.

You can set different locations and service areas for different offices if you cover multiple locations; these should be set individually per page.

Structured data can get complex, so if you are unsure, it is best to consult a professional, as data that is misaligned with the content can cause more harm than good.

You can learn more about structured data from the wonderful folks at Google Search Central.

Structured data isn’t straightforward and requires some coding knowledge. If you’re unsure how to get started, have a chat with our friendly dev team.

How to Target Multiple Locations with SEO

Local SEO is key for businesses with multiple locations. Local SEO strategies we’ve explored in this guide include:

Creating dedicated location pages with geo-targeted content and keywords
Using location names in page URLs
Producing locally-focused blogs and social media for each location
Reviewing competitor content for inspiration
Building links, especially in local news and directory sites and getting mentioned in local publications
Optimising for mobile, since most local searches are mobile
Managing Google Business Profiles and reviews for all locations
Ensuring consistent NAP in directories.
Using structured data like opening hours, location(s) and service area(s)
Monitoring analytics to optimise ranking for each location’s keywords.

With an effective local SEO strategy tailored to each location, your multi-location business can drive more nearby customers to your locations and give a massive boost to your local visibility and conversions.

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