Today, I’m answering another question from my I LOVE SEO Facebook Community, which you’re welcome to join. Today’s question is from Cath Beaton from Phase Creative, and Cath asks,
“What’s the best way to optimise for a multiple location business without duplicating content?”
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Well let’s start with understanding why location optimisation is important.
Google and other search engines use location as a factor when they’re indexing results. We also know that customers, like you and me, often type in location keywords when we’re searching for a business or service. So we might be looking for a pizza delivery company in Sydney, or we might go down to suburb, or even street location.
It’s also been proven that customers are more likely to trust and buy from a local service rather than a big, corporate, global company. So that whole buy local thing can work online as well.
First of all, what not to do.
It’s not at a great idea to buy multiple domains with each of your different locations in them.
You’ll end up with lots and lots of different sites to maintain, to update, to optimise and to drive links to, and they’ll all get out of sync and it’ll be a big headache. So I don’t recommend setting up different domains for each of your locations.
Instead, have one single domain for all your businesses and then setup individual pages.
So what you need to do is create content that’s specifically focused on that particular location. So, for example, a page in your website for each location that you have. You want to use that location keyword in the page title, possibly the URL, in the body copy. Wherever it’s appropriate.
Don’t go crazy, just like with any other keyword you don’t want to spam the page with that keyword. There’s no density you’re trying to hit, just use it naturally.
Now we often see sites where there are multiple pages, you know, window cleaner Newtown, window cleaner Petersham, window cleaner Stanmore, and there’s very little difference between those pages and this is where the duplicate content issue that Cath is talking about comes in.
The pages need to be substantially different. You can’t just have the same 80 words of content and the only thing that’s difference is the location keyword.
So try to make each of those pages really full and useful and engaging. Include other information like opening hours, transport options, parking, anything that can beef up that page and make it genuinely useful. You could also embed a Google map into each of those pages to help people find that particular location.
But the pages need to be different, you can’t just change one word.
Now that you’ve setup these individual pages, other things you can do are create Google My Business pages for each of the locations, and try to build up some reviews for each different location as well.
You can list your website on legitimate directories, such as TrueLocal, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and be consistency about the address details that you use for each location.
It’s called your NAP, name, address and phone number. Try to use the same format wherever those name, address and phone number appear.
And then, just like any other piece of content you need to share that content. Get it out there. Share it on social media, maybe list in your email, build links to those individual pages to make them stand out in their own right so that they can become landing pages for each location in your business.
After that, when it comes to location it really is about getting a little bit creative. So you’ve got your page for that particular location, and perhaps now you want to do some location based blog posts. Again, make sure the content is useful and rich, and answers a customer question.
So for example if you’re a wedding photographer and you really want to get some traction in your local area of Melbourne, why not do a post about the best places to take wedding photographs in Melbourne. Or the top 10 parks in Melbourne for a great wedding photo shoot.
Just like with any other piece of content, make sure that it’s useful, engaging and answers a customer question, and it will also have that location benefit as well.
So I hope that answers your question Cath.
Thanks for watching the video. If you have any further questions or comments, please leave them below.
And if you’d like me to answer one of your SEO questions, head to my I LOVE SEO Facebook Group and I could make you a little video like this.
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Thanks for watching.
Over to you
Are you a multiple location business? Have you optimised your SEO? Share your results below.
