How to Rank Multiple Location Businesses in Google with Joe Troyer

Joe Troyer  0:43

what are the best practices for ranking businesses with multiple locations inside of local search? What is the best way to list their location? And to get their business rank for their main keyword phrases in each city? Alright, so this is a great question. And honestly, a question that I think a lot of people have, but are frankly, kind of scared to ask it, they feel like they should know the answer to the question already.

So local SEO with multiple locations is really actually guys very, very simple. And I'm sure that most of you guys are like overthinking the crap out of it. If you know how to do local SEO with with one website and get it ranked in local, you know, going after multiple locations and multiple cities, right. And whether the company's in five cities, or they're in 35, cities, the process really doesn't change a whole lot. All right, so there's just a core couple of things that you got to really keep in mind, or things that I would make sure happening if I was in your shoes. Alright, so first off, I would put each and every location on one website.

Okay, each and every location on one website, the only time or times that I wouldn't do that is if let's say, each location is a franchise, maybe then it's up for debate whether you want to put each location on a website. But even then I would really push to have it on one website, right. The only other reason that I wouldn't have each location, right, pointing back to one domain or to one website, is if you're doing anything that could be considered grey hat or black hat. Right? If you're doing anything that's considered gray hat or black hat, you would want to keep things separated so that you don't have all of your eggs in one basket, right?

Because if you get hit with that one domain, right, across all those GMB listings, let's say there's 20 or 30 locations, it's gonna be a lot of work, standing everything back up and fixing the issues. All right. So if I were you, though, 95% of the time, right, put it on one website. Next up, each city, then right should have a corresponding page. And you either want to, you know, put that on yourdomain.com your clients domain.com/city or put it on an individual subdomain. So you do city.yourdomain.com. If you're going to be going after a lot of locations, I think that the subdomain makes more sense, right. So let's say you're working with a client and they're in 15. States, right?

The subdomain probably makes more sense, right? If you're working with a client, and their service area, let's say is like 30 miles. And so they're not in a lot of locations, they just have a service area that they want to hit. If that's the case, then I would probably use this top structure. Okay, so those are kind of the two different use cases that we use.

Next up, whether you go with a subdomain, or you're going with a page, you're going to want to put the NA P, the name, the address and the phone number on that page or subdomain. All right. And each location, each location that you want to have a Google My Business for, right needs its own separate address and phone number. Okay, if I were you, I can keep the name exactly the same. And I would just change out and swap out Write the address and the phone number.

Next up on that page or on that subdomain, depending on what you prefer, or what you end up going after I would embed the map right of that location from Google My Business right, you can embed it with driving directions on that page and subdomain. I would also link directly back to the GMB to the Google My Business account from that page in subdomain as well. Okay, and these last things, guys here, these are all things that are just like correlations, right?

You're helping Google make sure that it doesn't trip and fall, right? You're telling Google and showing Google exactly what it wants to see. Okay, will all of these have a huge, you know, impact on your campaign? No, but it's going to help them make the correlation that this is the page or this is the subdomain for that city,

Joe Troyer 5:02

okay, we just don't want Google having any confusion there. And then each location should have their own optimized GMB location right inside of your Google My Business account. Okay, and guys, that's, that's really it. Right? So, if you're going after, let's say, Philadelphia, PA and for one location, right and West Palm Beach, Florida for another, each GMB should be treated separately.

Okay? And it should be optimized separately. You don't want to use images from PA on the west palm beach location, right? When you're geo tagging images on your Google My Business account, you want to geo tag them, right for whichever account or location you're going after, right? If you're going after optimizing inside of the West Palm Beach account, you don't want to obviously be putting in information about Philadelphia. Okay, so keep it kind of siloed in terms of your Optimation optimization structure.