A Quick Guide to Local SEO for Multiple Locations

If you want to dominate local search rankings, you must perform local SEO for multiple locations. Not only will this help you build brand awareness, but it will also enable you to position yourself where your target customers can easily find you. 

There are many strategies you can use to ensure that customers in multiple locations will find you. Let’s take a look at some of them. 

1. Research your competitors

Before you develop a local SEO campaign, you’ll need to have a good grasp of the market and a thorough understanding of your competitors. Find out what makes your business unique and how you can leverage your strengths for a specific location. This will help you create a more effective local SEO strategy. 

Start by analysing your company’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Then, compare them with those of your competitors. Also, identify the areas your competitors are doing well and those that require improvement. Make sure to check their: 

• Content strategy
• Link building strategy
• Website structure

2. Do not use multiple websites

You might be tempted to build multiple websites for every location you serve. However, this is counter-productive. Because each website will be indexed separately, you will need to repeat everything you did on one site to ensure that all sites will rank well. For example, if you post new content on your Northampton site, your websites for Kettering, Daventry and Corby should have new content, too. 

Managing multiple websites is expensive and time-consuming, especially if you’re a small business owner. Therefore, we at Springhill Marketing recommend building a single website with individual pages for each area you serve. This will make it easier and more convenient for you to target specific locations without optimising multiple websites. 

3. Create content tailored for each location

To ensure successful local SEO for multiple locations, make sure to develop content tailored for each area you serve. Besides making your web pages relevant, this would also enable you to optimise on-page elements, including page titles, H1s, and meta descriptions. 

For instance, let’s say you’re a real estate company serving different towns in Northamptonshire. You can write content that discusses what makes each location unique and attractive for prospective home buyers. 

A word of caution, though. Never make the mistake of simply modifying the name of the location on each page. Otherwise, your web pages would be flagged for plagiarism or duplicate content. Instead, you have to make sure that each page contains unique information. Not only will this help you dodge a Google penalty, but it also allows you to create a more targeted user experience for your web visitors. 

4. Build backlinks

As with regular SEO, link building is crucial to local SEO. Having lots of quality backlinks to your site tells Google that you’re an authority in your niche or industry. Backlinks are also an excellent source of referral traffic. 

You can utilise the following strategies to build backlinks to your site: 

• Collaborate with local bloggers.
• Submit a guest post to a popular publication that is relevant to your business.
• Sponsor or host events to earn links from local publications.
• Let local journalists know if there’s something exciting happening at your business. 

5. Ask customers for reviews

Encourage former customers in the locations you’re targeting to say a few words about your business. Customer reviews are effective marketing tools because they serve as social proof of the quality and reliability of your products/services. More importantly, they help build customer trust and contribute to local SEO for multiple locations. 

Here are a few ways to convince former customers to review your business: 

• Conduct short email surveys about your business.
• Ask customers to send you feedback right after purchasing a product/service.
• Provide incentives.

Start Optimising for Local SEO

If your Northampton business serves multiple areas, optimising your site for local SEO is an effective way to drive traffic to both your site and physical location. This is why you should consider the pointers discussed above to attract more customers and generate more income for your business. 

If you need help optimising your site for local search, we at Springhill Marketing are happy to help. We can offer you tailored SEO solutions to help you make the most of the opportunities major search engines can provide. Please speak with us today.