One template with the town name swapped
The defining failure of multi-location SEO. It is the doorway pattern at scale and Google has been discounting it for a decade.
Guide
Local SEO for multiple locations
Every extra location multiplies the work in a way that is not obvious until the third one. Each branch needs its own Google Business Profile, its own page, its own reviews and its own consistent details everywhere those details appear. Done well it compounds, because each branch reinforces the brand. Done badly it produces a set of near-identical pages that compete with each other and rank for nothing.
8 steps
Free to read, in the order it pays to do it. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to download.
The failure is almost always the same: one location page template with the town name swapped. Google has been discounting that pattern for years, and the more branches there are the more obvious it becomes.
The fix is unglamorous and it works: each location page has to contain something only that location could say.
What businesses with several locations are actually competing for
These are the shapes the searches take. The words in brackets are whatever the searcher puts there, which is usually a town, a neighbourhood or a brand.
- [brand] [town]
- [service] near me
- [brand] opening hours [area]
- [service] [neighbourhood]
- [brand] store locator
The work, in the order it pays to do it
- 1
One Google Business Profile per physical location, claimed and verified
Not one profile for the company. Each branch with its own address, its own phone number where possible, and its own hours. A single profile for a multi-branch business is invisible everywhere except one place.
- 2
One page per location on the site, linked from the profile
The profile should point at the branch page, not the home page. It is the most common misconfiguration in multi-location setups and it wastes every click the profile earns.
- 3
Make each location page say something only that branch can
The manager, the parking, what that branch is known for, which services it actually offers, a photograph of that building, directions from a local landmark. Three sentences of genuinely local content is the difference between a page and a duplicate.
- 4
Give each branch its own reviews
Reviews attach to a profile, not to a brand. A branch with none looks new and untrusted next to a sibling with two hundred, so the review request has to happen at each location.
- 5
Build a store locator that search engines can read
If the locator is a map widget that loads addresses from JavaScript with no links, the location pages are effectively orphaned. Plain links to every branch page, on a crawlable list, underneath whatever map you want on top.
- 6
Keep name, address and phone identical everywhere
Across profiles, the site, and every directory, for every branch. At ten locations this is a data problem rather than a marketing one, and it needs a single source of truth somebody owns.
- 7
Do not let branches compete for the same term
Two branches in the same city both optimised for the same city term will split the signal. Differentiate by neighbourhood, by service, or by consolidating the target.
- 8
Use consistent structured data per location
LocalBusiness markup on each branch page with that branch’s own address, hours and phone. Copying one branch’s markup across all of them is worse than having none.
What usually goes wrong
Every profile pointing at the home page
Throws away the most valuable click each profile produces and leaves every branch page unlinked from the thing that should link to it.
A JavaScript-only store locator
The branch pages exist and nothing links to them in a way a crawler can follow.
Reviews pooled at head office
They do not transfer. A branch with no reviews of its own is a branch with no reviews.
How to tell whether it is working
Rankings are not the measure. These are, and all of them come from accounts in your own name rather than from a report you have to take on trust.
- Profile calls and direction requests per branch, compared against each other
- Search Console performance filtered to each location page, not the site total
- Review count and recency per branch, so the weak ones are visible
- Whether any two branches are ranking for the same term, which means they are competing
If you would rather not do it yourself
Everything above is work you can do without hiring anybody, and the profile half of it is worth doing whatever else you decide. If you want it done for you, this is the service that covers it, and we scope it on a call before anything starts.
Other guides
Questions about local SEO for businesses with several locations
Should each location have its own website?
Almost never. Separate sites split the authority the brand has earned. One site with a strong page per location, each with its own profile pointing at it, is stronger and far less work to maintain.
How different do location pages need to be?
Enough that somebody reading two of them could tell which branch they were looking at without the address. In practice that is a few paragraphs of genuinely local content, not a rewrite of everything.
Can we use the same phone number for every branch?
You can, but a local number per branch performs better and makes the listings easier to keep consistent. A single central number is workable if the rest of the details are right.
What about service area businesses with several bases?
Same principle, with the addresses hidden and the service areas set so they do not overlap more than they have to. Overlapping areas make your own branches compete.
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