SEO Tips for Businesses with Multiple Locations

There are many local businesses that operate as part of a franchise system, as a brand licensee or underneath a corporate structure that has many locations across the country or region. In order to obtain high organic search engine rankings, SEO for multiple locations can be challenging. Below are some tips for small business SEO that will help increase your local pages’ ranks in the local search engine results:

Avoid Duplicate Content

Repetitive descriptions can cause many issues for search engine rankings. Google, as well as other search engines, focus on unique content and penalize those who have duplication of articles within a website as well as across other websites. In order to avoid being penalized for duplicate content, it is suggested that you use unique location information and localized content.

Create a Unique URL for Each Location’s Page

In order to allow search engines to display the most relevant local search results, it is recommended that each location’s web page have a special URL that includes the city or state.

Claim Social Media Pages

To increase your business’ rank in the search results, include social media profiles for each location. Having a social media presence is extremely important for any business today.

Claim Directory Listings

It is highly suggested that you claim local directory listings for each location. Directories include Google+ Local, Yahoo!, Bing, Yelp, LocalPages, MerchantCircle and Citysearch. Be sure to keep these directories updated in order to continue improving your ranking in the search results.

One last tip to keep in mind is to imagine each location of your business to be it’s own entity on the internet.