Advice on business with multiple locations

[Chucker]

We have a client that started with a single location and, in the space of 6 months has opened up 5 more locations.

We have followed a naming strategy for the GMB as follows:

• Brand - location1
• Brand - location2
• Brand - location3
• Brand - location4
• Brand - location5
• Brand - location6

Because the locations are new when searching 2-6 location 1 appears in the search results even though the newer location is more relevant.
is it just a case of waiting for all the citations to be indexed / reviews to poulate and the optimisation work to kick in to start seeing the visibility or is there something more specific we need to do with multi-location businesses?
On the website, is it best practice to have a location-specific service page for every service for local SEO even though the service offered is identical and create unique copy for each location service?

e.g.

website.com/location1/service-1
website.com/location2/service-1
website.com/location3/service-1

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @Chucker! Got a few questions for you that would be helpful to know. I didn't want to assume anything

• How new are the additional locations?
• What kind of distance (mileage/kilometers) are the locations apart from each other?
• When you say "...the newer location is more relevant", how are you measuring relevancy?
• Are you referring to Local Pack Ranking or traditional organic?
• Does each GBP point to their respective local service website page?
• Are the citations pointing to the unique landing pages of each location?

We typically don't build out sub-service pages for each location page, we usually just make sure to have well placed call-to-action pictures/buttons with links to the service pages. However, other members may have difference best practices.

 

[Chucker]

Hi @Chucker! Got a few questions for you that would be helpful to know. I didn't want to assume anything

• How new are the additional locations?
• What kind of distance (mileage/kilometers) are the locations apart from each other?
• When you say "...the newer location is more relevant", how are you measuring relevancy?
• Are you referring to Local Pack Ranking or traditional organic?
• Does each GBP point to their respective local service website page?
• Are the citations pointing to the unique landing pages of each location?

We typically don't build out sub-service pages for each location page, we usually just make sure to have well placed call-to-action pictures/buttons with links to the service pages. However, other members may have difference best practices.

Hey thanks for your response:
1. Within the last 3 months sone within the last week.
2. they are all within 5km of each other - very close
3. relevant as in distance from where the person is searching or located within a specific suburb
4. All GBP point to the homepage - should they point to a specific location web page instead?
5. No - citations to the homepage currently but haven't built a lot yet so this could be changed.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hey thanks for your response:
1. Within the last 3 months sone within the last week.
2. they are all within 5km of each other - very close
3. relevant as in distance from where the person is searching or located within a specific suburb
4. All GBP point to the homepage - should they point to a specific location web page instead?
5. No - citations to the homepage currently but haven't built a lot yet so this could be changed.

Thanks for the additional info. Regarding #4 and #5, yes I would recommend that the website address be the local location pages rather than the homepage. I'd also recommend giving equal billing to all the locations on the other webpages. For example, if you have a footer with only the first location's address, you may instead want a listing of all your locations addresses on the footer.

From our experience, I think you may have some struggles getting your preferred location to show up on local searches due to the limited distance between the locations. While proximity is typically the most important factor in local pack, there are lots of other factors. Frustratingly, Google's local search results often seem to defy logic. For some of our clients that have locations that are in close proximity to each other, we often struggle with cannibalization of our efforts unless they are in different named suburbs/neighborhoods. Ideally after a little time and effort, you may have more than one of your locations show up on the local pack.

@Claire Carlile is a great resource for optimizing local landing pages. She has a great free course on BrightLocal that I'd recommend you watch. Also she just recently hosted a webinar on the same subject with Emily Brady. Here are the links:

BrightLocal Academy - How to Optimize Location Pages

Want to create powerful, SEO-optimized location pages for your website? Then look no further!

academy.brightlocal.com

Best of luck! -Jeff

 

[Claire Carlile]

Thanks for the additional info. Regarding #4 and #5, yes I would recommend that the website address be the local location pages rather than the homepage. I'd also recommend giving equal billing to all the locations on the other webpages. For example, if you have a footer with only the first location's address, you may instead want a listing of all your locations addresses on the footer.

From our experience, I think you may have some struggles getting your preferred location to show up on local searches due to the limited distance between the locations. While proximity is typically the most important factor in local pack, there are lots of other factors. Frustratingly, Google's local search results often seem to defy logic. For some of our clients that have locations that are in close proximity to each other, we often struggle with cannibalization of our efforts unless they are in different named suburbs/neighborhoods. Ideally after a little time and effort, you may have more than one of your locations show up on the local pack.

@Claire Carlile is a great resource for optimizing local landing pages. She has a great free course on BrightLocal that I'd recommend you watch. Also she just recently hosted a webinar on the same subject with Emily Brady. Here are the links:

BrightLocal Academy - How to Optimize Location Pages

Want to create powerful, SEO-optimized location pages for your website? Then look no further!

academy.brightlocal.com

Best of luck! -Jeff

Aw thanks @JeffClevelandTN - that's very kind of you!