Your business, instead of having one location, has many locations or franchises. You wonder how to put in place an effective local SEO strategy for each address. Although it may seem complex, it is quite possible to set up a solid local SEO strategy for several addresses. In fact, if you know the basics of local SEO, you’ve already gone through much of the process. Here’s what you need to know about successful local SEO for multiple locations.
How to structure the website of a multi-address company?
The question the business often asks is, “do we need a separate website for each of our locations?” The answer is no.
At first glance, it might seem logical for a business to have a unique website for each location. In the long run, however, this is bad for both SEO and the image of the business.
And it’s hard enough for a single website to gain popularity in the search engines – imagine the time and effort it takes to achieve the goal with many sites at once. Additionally, websites can be expensive to build and maintain, which is inconvenient for businesses with limited budgets.
The best approach is to have a main website, for example https://notre-business.com and create separate local pages on that site. These location pages can be configured as subdomains, which look like https://ville.notre-business.com, or subdirectories, which look like https://notre-business.com/vill.
The Google spokesperson said that there isn’t much of a difference between the two when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). But whatever you choose, it’s important that each site has its own unique URL.
Read Also: The importance of Local SEO for small and medium-sized businesses
What should a local page contain to optimize its local SEO?
Once the urls are defined, it’s time to create the corresponding page. At a minimum, each page should contain the following information:
- Addresses
- Phone number
- Opening hours
- An integrated Google map
- All unique promotions at this location
- All the unique services at this location
At least one paragraph of unique content containing keywords based on location
Sending links, if applicable to a dedicated page in local directories such as Facebook, Yelp, etc.
Two things that shouldn’t be on a local page are duplicate content and contact information for other locations. In other words, don’t copy and paste the same generic text on all of the location pages, and don’t include the addresses or phone numbers of neighboring sites.
Optimize each local page individually
Once you’ve created individual site pages filled with useful information, it’s time to optimize the On Site Optimization of each Page. To do this, check the title tag, meta description, and H1 tag of each page. Each of them should contain keywords specific to the geographic location. Also, provide Google with information about each location by adding structured data to the page. You can do this with the help of structured data markup from Google.
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Promote your local pages using sitemaps
Help Google and other search engines index your local pages by creating and submitting sitemaps. You will find on this same blog, a complete guide on the 4 essential sitemaps of a natural referencing strategy .
Boost the local SEO of each page
Google My Business allows multi-establishment (multi-address) businesses to create separate google My Business pages. On this same blog, you will find a Google My Business SEO guide. If necessary, you can consult the Google My Business help instructions.
When filling out the required information on the Google My Business pages, follow these best practices:
- Make sure to link to each location’s local page on the main website. In other words, link to https://notre-business.com/ville, and not just https://notre-business.com on the Google My Business listing
- The phone number entered on the Google My Business listing for each location should put customers in direct contact with the establishment concerned. Do not provide the headquarters phone number.
- Make sure the company name is the same on all Google My Business listings. Do not include a city or other geo-specific words in the name.
- Select as many categories as possible from the list provided by Google and make sure they are consistent from ad to ad. The only exception is if two locations provide very different services, but this is rare.
These best practices should be applied to any other local SEO service including the following:
- Yelp: https://biz.yelp.fr/
- Bing addresses: https://www.bingplaces.com/
- Foursquare: http://fr.business.foursquare.com/
- Local Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/197254963682414
- Sector and export directories: https://www.action-commerciale.com/annuaries-sectors-industriels.php
Don’t get caught up in the quantity
Limit yourself to the major directories. Bet on quality over quantity. Why ? Well, Google pays attention to the consistency of a company’s information, provided in different places online. If a business’s name, address, or phone number varies from location to location, it affects its reliability and Google lowers its rankings accordingly. It’s easier to maintain and update information when you only have to manage a limited number of records.
Don’t forget to track the performance of each page
To help you assess the performance of each local page, create corresponding reports in Google Analytics. On this same blog you will find a guide to installing report frames in your Google Analytics account. The report to use is report N ° 2: Natural Traffic Report by Landing Page.
Save Time with Precise Geographic Targeting
Google Adwords, through the relevance and universality of the data it holds on the current search behavior of each Internet user, is the solution par excellence for reaching prospects and future customers through geographic targeting on local, national and for export. Experiment and generate leads through geographic targeting.
Must Read: 10 Digital Marketing Basics Every SEO Expert Should Know
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