Single-City Multi-Location Business Local SEO

[br1168]

Looking for insights from this group on best practice for local SEO with a single-city, multi-location business. I think this is fairly straightforward in a larger city with designated neighborhoods you can try to rank for, but my question is more specific to smaller cities without defined neighborhoods (the only difference between the locations is a street name).

Assuming each office has its own location page, would you:
1. target the same city-level keywords for each individual location page? (e.g. taco shops in knoxville)
2. setup a city-level page and try to rank that instead of the individual pages (e.g. a main locations page)
3. pick one of the locations that's perhaps older or closer to city center and try to rank in that location ahead of the others?
4. Something entirely different?

Cheers,
Brian

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi Brian,

For smaller cities where all the search volume in the area is focused on that city, I would optimize the homepage for "City service" depending on what folks are searching for there, and create content that focuses on what the business has to offer. It's much easier to rank the home page than it is to rank an internal page initially, and all the locations are in the same city.

As far as what is presented on the HP as the primary location. I would choose the one that has been around the longest, and has the most established NAP. You can also list all the locations (I prefer near the bottom) on the HP by linking the Google business listings. Alternately, you can create a map or graphic that shows them all on the same map with links that go back to the location pages.

Location pages should focus on what is unique about that location, as well as it's NAP. For example, if the business is a medical practice, each doctor's bio and unique services should appear on the relevant location page, or under it's navigation. Since they all are targeting the same city, you can also target hyperlocal information or long tail searches that folks are searching for in the area in an effort to get the location pages to rank for alternate terms you homepage might not be optimized for.

Other folks might have different ideas, but that's the way I would approach it in this type of situation.

-Cherie

 

[br1168]

Thanks Cherie! So as an example, if this was for a taco shop with 10 franchises in a single city and franchises in other cities as well, would you target "tacos in knoxville" with every individual location page?

I'm thinking the homepage optimized for "taco franchises" and individual pages for each location as well. But still wondering if I should try ranking a city-level page instead of individual location pages, something like tacos.com/CITY/location-1.

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi Brian,

Without more information about the business, the city, or the domain, I really can't advise much more specifically. I would have to research, and truthfully that takes more time than I have currently.

It sounds like you are building a pretty large site, with locations in multiple cities...is that correct? Bringing other cities in complicates things quite a bit, and changes my original strategy suggestion.

In general, your HP needs to encompass what the main point of your site is. If it's the franchise, and what it has to offer, then that's how it should be optimized - brand focused, so to speak. Each location's page would then be optimized at the local level for the city, or neighborhood, it is located in - and the SEO strategy will change for each location due to competition, etc.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific, but I hope this helps somewhat!

Thanks,
Cherie

 

[dannanelli]

Hi Brain,

At first glance I think having the location pages are a better idea than one city page. If the business ever expands to many cities then creating a city page for each city that links to location pages could be good. You could try both and see which perform better as well.

Location page titles could be something like “Mexican Food Tampa | Bob’s Tacos 4th St Location”. You could alter them a bit like “Tampa Mexican Restaurant | Bob’s Tacos Smith Dr Location” to give variety.