Multi-location SEO: the complete guide

What is multi-location SEO?

Multi-location SEO is local SEO done once for each address you run, plus the shared groundwork that keeps all of them consistent. If you own three gyms, two clinics or a small franchise, a customer searching for "gym near me" is matched to individual locations. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, so each location has to earn its own place.

This guide is written for businesses with 2 to 10 locations. A good aim at that size is a repeatable routine that one person can run for every location, and a few decisions made once so that they do not have to be made ten times.

If the idea of local SEO is new to you, start with our plain-English guide on what local SEO is. It covers the map pack and the main signals. Everything below assumes you know those basics and want to apply them across several addresses.

How is local SEO for multiple locations different from one location?

The work is the same kind of work, repeated, with three extra problems. The first is that every location competes against a different set of nearby businesses, so how the downtown location ranks does not tell you how the suburban one ranks. The second is consistency: a business name written three different ways across ten listings is confusing for customers. The third is attention. With one location, the owner notices a new review or a wrong phone number. With six, something goes unanswered for weeks unless someone is clearly responsible.

Google explains in its own words what it uses to rank local results: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well a profile matches what someone is searching for, distance is how far the business is from the person searching, and prominence is how well known the business is, which Google ties to how many websites link to it and how many reviews it has. Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You can read the full explanation in Google's guide to improving your local ranking.

Distance is measured from each business, so improving the Main Street clinic does not change how far the Oak Street clinic is from the person searching. Each address has to earn its own relevance and prominence, and the rest of this guide is about how to do that without ten times the effort.

Does each location need its own Google Business Profile?

Yes. Each location that customers can visit, or that serves customers from a real base, should have its own Google Business Profile. The profile is the listing customers see in Maps and local results.

Google's rules say each location should have only one profile, and the profile has to be for a real-world place. Google states that a rented mailing address or virtual office where you do not actually operate is not eligible. A co-working space qualifies only with clear signage, customers received during business hours and your own staff present. You can read the details in Google's eligibility guidelines for a Business Profile.

That rule matters because some owners are tempted to open extra profiles for neighborhoods they want to rank in. A profile at an address with no staff and no customers does not meet the guidelines. If you want to reach a new neighborhood, the honest route is a real location or a service-area setup that Google allows, not a made-up address.

Departments and individual practitioners are a separate case. Google allows publicly facing departments that operate as distinct entities, and individual practitioners who can be contacted directly at the verified location, to have their own profile. Google says support staff cannot. When in doubt, read the page above before creating anything.

How do I keep the name, address and phone number consistent?

Your name, address and phone number together are often called NAP. Keep these three details identical on your website, your Google profile and directories such as Yelp, so a customer never has to guess which number to call.

With several locations, the fix is a single master sheet. Write down, once, the exact version of each location's name, address, phone number and hours, and copy from that sheet every time you fill in a profile, directory or web page. When something changes, change the sheet first and then every place it appears.

Google's eligibility guidelines say to use a local phone number instead of a central call center number whenever possible. A separate number per location also makes it easy to tell which location a call came from.

Should every location use the same business name?

Use your real business name, the one on your signs, your invoices and your website, and add a location only if that is how the sign reads. If your clinics are all called Example Physio and each building has a neighborhood name on the door, the profile can match the door. Google's guidelines say the name should reflect your business's real-world name, and that unnecessary information, including location information, is not permitted in it.

Decide the naming rule once and write it on the master sheet. Everyone who touches a profile, a directory listing or a web page then follows the same rule, and the business looks like one business that has several addresses.

The same goes for the first line of a description, the main photo style and the way you write the services list. Local differences belong in the details that are really different: the team, the building, the parking, the local offer.

What should I fill in on every location's profile?

Fill in every field Google offers, for every location, and make each one specific to that place. Google says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results. The full list is in our Google Business Profile optimization checklist, and the guide on how to rank higher on Google Maps explains which parts matter most.

For a multi-location business the usual failure is copying one profile to the next without changing anything. These are the parts that should differ between locations.

• Hours: each location's real opening hours, plus its holiday hours. A wrong hour sends a customer to a closed door.
• Photos: real pictures of that building, that entrance and that team.
• Description: a few sentences about that location, such as who it serves and what is nearby. Avoid pasting the same paragraph everywhere.
• Services and categories: choose the one main category that best matches the location, plus extras only where they apply. A location that offers a service the others do not should say so.
• Website link: send each profile to that location's own page on your site, not to the home page.

How should I set up my website for several locations?

Keep one website and give each location its own page on it. One site is simpler to keep up than one site per location. For a business with 2 to 10 locations, a single site with a location page for each address is the simplest setup that works.

Each page should carry the location's name, address, phone number, hours, a map, directions and the services offered there, along with details only that location can offer. It should be a page a customer would actually use, not a template with the city name swapped. Google's spam policies list doorway abuse, which includes pages targeted at specific cities that funnel users to one page. The next guide covers it step by step: how to build location pages that rank.

Add a locations page that lists every address and links to each page, and link to it from your main menu. This helps customers find their nearest branch.

How do I get reviews for each location?

A review is left on one location's profile. When a customer reviews your Riverside clinic, that review sits on the Riverside profile only. A business with one hundred reviews at its flagship and eight at the new branch has a branch that looks small to customers, however good the brand is.

The fix is to ask for reviews the same way at every location, with a direct link to that location's own review box. Use a separate link and QR code for each address, and make sure the person behind the counter hands out the right one. Our guide on how to get more Google reviews covers the full method, including Google's rules on asking for reviews.

Two of those rules matter more with several locations. Ask every customer, not only the ones who seem happy: Google's policy says merchants may not selectively solicit positive reviews. The same policy bars offering incentives such as payment, discounts, or free goods or services for reviews, even if one location's manager wants to speed things up.

Canadian readers should also remember CASL, Canada's anti-spam law, when sending review requests by email or text. Read the government's page on Canada's anti-spam legislation for the consent rules. This is general information, not legal advice.

Who should reply to reviews and manage each location?

Someone at each location should own the replies, because they know what happened. A manager can thank a customer by name and mention the actual visit in a way head office cannot. Head office can set the tone and the rules, such as how to answer a complaint and what never to say in public, and let the location do the replying.

Give people access to the location they run and no more. A front desk team member who can see one location's reviews cannot accidentally reply on behalf of another, and a manager who leaves does not take access to everything with them. In Reputant, the account owner sees every location, and each staff member gets a login scoped to one location with one of two roles: location manager or front desk.

Whatever tool you use, write down who is responsible for each location and how fast replies should go out. Our template for a short reply is in the guides on responding to positive reviews and responding to negative reviews.

What about listings on Yelp and other directories?

A citation is a mention of your business name, address and phone on another site, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor or a local directory. Each location needs its own listing on the directories that matter in your industry, with details that match the master sheet exactly.

Watch for duplicates, where a closed location or an old name still has a listing, and details that drifted over time. A moved location is an example: the old address stays alive on three directories and confuses customers. When a location moves or closes, update or remove its listings the same week.

Reputant's citation check saves your listing on Yelp, TripAdvisor and OpenTable and compares its name, address, phone, rating and hours with your Google profile. It reads those pages and reports differences; it does not change them for you, so fixes happen on each site. Checking the three sites location by location is a good habit after any change.

How do I track rankings for each location?

Track every location on its own. A single ranking number for the business hides the one location that is slipping, and Google says distance from the searcher is a ranking factor. A rank grid, which checks your Google Maps position from many points around a location, shows where you are strong and where a competitor owns the neighborhood.

The competitors differ for each location, too. The business ahead of you in one town may not exist in the next. Look at who holds the top three spots near each address, how many reviews they have and how recently they got them, and use that to decide where your effort goes first. Sometimes the answer is simply that one location needs more reviews, while another needs its profile completed.

In Reputant, each location has its own rank grid, run on request, along with its own competitor tracking. There is no combined report across locations yet, so you check each location on its own. The local rank tracker page explains how the grids work.

What routine keeps all locations in good shape?

A short, regular routine beats a big annual clean-up. This one gives every address the same attention. Copy it, assign a name to each line and set a recurring reminder.

What mistakes do multi-location businesses make most often?

Check these before you add anything new.

• Opening extra profiles at addresses with no staff or customers, which breaks Google's guidelines.
• Copying one location's profile and page to the next without changing the details.
• Sending every profile to the home page instead of the location's own page.
• Letting one location's reviews lag far behind the others because nobody owns them.
• Forgetting to update listings when a location moves, renames or closes.
• Judging the business by one number, which hides the location that is losing ground.
• Building many pages targeted at specific cities that funnel visitors to one page. Google's spam policies list this as doorway abuse.

What can a tool do for multi-location SEO, and what can it not?

No software replaces the decisions above: which locations to open, what to write on a page, how to treat a customer. A tool can take the repeated parts off your plate.

Reputant keeps up to ten locations under one account. Each location has its own Google Business Profile connection, reviews from Google and Facebook, review-request campaigns, rank grid, competitor tracking and citation check. Locations are added one at a time, and reports are per location. Bulk import and a roll-up report across all locations are planned but not built. It does not edit your listings on other sites.

If you do not use a tool, the master sheet and the monthly checklist above do most of the job. They scale to a handful of locations without extra software.