Multi-location SEO requires specific strategies to ensure each branch or service area performs optimally. The data indicates a focus on location-specific landing pages, technical SEO elements like hreflang tags and sitemaps, and maintaining overall content quality to avoid sitewide penalties. Enterprises should invest in stakeholder training, appropriate tools, and consistent monitoring of branch performance.
Location-Specific Landing Pages
Creating dedicated landing pages for each location is a valuable practice for multi-location businesses. These pages can take several forms, including individual pages for each branch, city-based pages for service areas, or pages tailored to specific departments within a location, such as sales, parts, or service at a car dealership. Linking each Google Business Profile to its corresponding landing page on the company website is a general best practice.
However, the source materials caution against publishing large volumes of thin, near-duplicate content. While major brands may sometimes rank with low-quality landing pages due to established brand recognition, this is not a reliable strategy. The Helpful Content Update (HCU) introduced by Google in August 2022 includes a sitewide signal that rewards websites publishing high-quality, helpful content, meaning a proliferation of low-quality location pages could negatively impact overall site performance.
Hreflang Implementation for Multi-Language Sites
For websites serving multiple languages and regions, correct implementation of hreflang tags is essential. These tags inform search engines about the intended language and geographic region of a page, mitigating duplicate content issues and ensuring users are directed to the appropriate version of the site.
The source materials provide an example implementation for English (US), French (France), and Spanish (Spain):
html
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”https://example.com/us/” />
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”https://example.com/fr/” />
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”https://example.com/es/” />
Best practices for hreflang tags include including them in the <head> section of each page or in the HTTP header, referencing all versions of a page (including the default), ensuring values match ISO 639-1 language codes and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 region codes, and using a self-referential tag on each page.
Technical SEO Considerations
Beyond hreflang tags, several other technical SEO elements are crucial for multi-language and multi-region websites. These include submitting separate XML sitemaps for each language or region in Google Search Console, ensuring mobile-friendliness through responsive design, and tracking performance using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor traffic, bounce rates, and conversions by language and region. Parameterized URLs are discouraged due to indexing challenges and a lack of clear geo-targeting signals.
Content Quality and Updates
Maintaining high-quality content is paramount. The data emphasizes the importance of creating content that meets search intent, using short sentences and paragraphs for readability, incorporating visuals, and including clear calls to action, internal links, and navigation menus.
Deleting “dead weight” pages—such as empty category pages, outdated blog posts, duplicate content, low-quality posts, unproductive ecommerce product pages, archive pages, and thin content—is recommended, as Google has indicated that a large site with numerous low-value pages can negatively impact SEO.
Updating and relaunching outdated content can also yield significant results. One case study cited a 1,102.43% increase in search engine traffic after a post was updated with improved formatting, additional content, and new screenshots.
Internal Linking and Content Referencing
Internal linking is a simple yet effective SEO technique. Linking to 2-5 other relevant pages on a site from new content provides context to search engines and users. The source materials also suggest linking to trusted external websites, such as Wikipedia or Google.com, to demonstrate content trustworthiness and provide a better user experience.
Local Listing Management
For multi-location businesses, maintaining accurate and up-to-date contact information, hours of operation, links, and premise photos across all listings is a basic requirement. Stakeholder training is also important to prevent violations of Google’s spam policies, such as purchasing links or engaging in excessive link exchanges.
Strategic Investments for Success
The data suggests that successful multi-location SEO requires strategic investments in several areas: stakeholder training and access, enterprise-ready software and tools, community engagement and responsiveness, ongoing branch performance monitoring, and proactive intervention and remediation when necessary.
Conclusion
The source materials highlight the importance of a holistic approach to multi-location SEO. This includes creating high-quality, location-specific landing pages, implementing technical SEO best practices like hreflang tags and sitemaps, maintaining content quality through regular updates and deletions of low-value pages, and actively managing local listings. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the performance of each branch contributes to the overall success of the brand.
Sources
- https://searchengineland.com/guide/multi-location-seo
- https://backlinko.com/seo-checklist
- https://www.lantern-digital.com/blog/seo-for-multi-language-and-multi-region-websites/