There are a variety of benefits that come with having multiple locations for your business. It gives an opportunity to serve a higher volume of customers and extend your brand recognition. However, operating out of multiple locations can add to the complexity of your digital marketing strategy. Fortunately, multi-location SEO allows your business to achieve high page rankings and get attention from potential customers in different locations. In this blog, we will discuss how to utilize SEO strategies for multi-location businesses.
What is Multi-Location SEO?
Multi-location SEO is a strategy optimized around each of your specific business locations. This can include multiple locations within the same city, county, state, or entire nation.
Why do you need to perform SEO for multiple locations anyway? It boils down to the importance of local SEO. Nearly half of all Google searches have the intention of finding local information. Moreover, 86 percent of consumers rely on the internet for finding local businesses.
With such a high quantity of online traffic seeking local information, a multi-location business can not use the same exact SEO purposes for all its different pages. A solid multi-location SEO strategy will allow you to gain the top spot on a specific area’s search engine results page.
Essential Multi-Location SEO Tips
Focus on Off-Page SEO
The best way to start your multi-location SEO strategy is to focus on your off-page SEO. This refers to SEO tactics applied outside of your website to improve its rankings and drive more traffic to your homepage.
Off-page SEO tactics often include link building, social media marketing, and guest content. The ultimate goal of off-page SEO is to get search engines and consumers to see your site as trustworthy. For example, when you use more backlinks from high-authority sites, Google will prioritize your website in search results.
Another important factor when it comes to off-page SEO is distribution. You should aim for about 70 percent of your off-page SEO to be directed to your homepage while 30 percent should go to your location pages.
Have Citations for Every Location
Citations are online references to a business’s listed name, address, and phone number. They play a key role in the success of your SEO strategy. For businesses with multiple locations, it’s critical to have citations for every location. This allows users to find the specific address and phone number nearest to them. Some of the “must have ” platforms for your different citations include Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp.
No Address on Your Homepage
If you have multiple locations, avoid including an address on your homepage. This can lead to confusion for first-time visitors. Rather, every business address should be listed on internal location pages. Additionally, the phone number on your homepage should be different from the phone numbers for each specific location.
Ensure Inner URLs are Properly Structured
Increasing your SEO rankings isn’t just about what you write, it’s about how you structure it. Firstly, you want to standardize what your URLs look like. Most servers don’t have an issue with mixed-case URLs, but writing them in all lowercase or all uppercase will make it easier to read for users.
Next, you want to avoid naked links. Here’s how naked links appear on your website: http://www.example.com/.
It makes links appear unorganized and unpleasant to the eye. Rather, utilize a call to action as anchor text so it looks something like this, “Click here to browse products!” This will make it easy for users to find the links they need and get to your landing pages.
Lastly, you want to use hyphens, not underscored in your URLs. Underscores often don’t appear when reading a URL and leave unnecessary empty space.
See Success in Your SEO Strategy
Managing and keeping track of your website’s SEO rankings can become quite a handful. That’s why our team at Digital Mules has taken the initiative to drive successful SEO strategies. We hold extensive experience in improving SEO rankings for businesses of all sizes. Whether you have one or more locations, we can help you derive and implement a successful SEO campaign. For more information on our services, please contact us today to set up an appointment.
