In the past, local SEO often meant just copying all your pages several hundred times and simply adding a city name to the URL and swapping the city in the page copy (ex: 124.com/Montreal or 123.com/Toronto).
Today, local SEO has become a lot more sophisticated – because local ranking algorithms have gotten a lot more sophisticated. If you want to see any improvement in your site’s ranking, you need to invest in writing legitimate and unique content for every geographic region you are trying to promote and reach out to. If you are not willing to spend the time or do the investment in catering to local areas, then abandon the entire premise. If you copy and paste the same content to each location, this will probably backfire in your face because Google will penalize you for featuring duplicate content on your website.
What are the steps to effectively conduct local SEO for multiple locations?
Create State/City-Specific Pages. It’s virtually impossible to rank well for each one of your target markets, unless you create content that is optimized specifically for each location. By creating separate web pages for each of your locations, you can better leverage some of the on-page elements, like optimized H1s, page titles, localized URLs, geo-specific content, and so on.
Create unique URLs for each location.
Segment content by location. If you feature product/service reviews or testimonials on your website, segment the content by location so that all reviews and testimonials are featured on their respective location page. Same goes for other details that may vary depending on the location, such as hours of operation, payment types accepted and driving directions.
Create Unique Content: The more unique content you can include on these geo-specific pages, the better.
Create several Google+ Local pages for each of your locations. Google plus allows you the opportunity to expand the online presence of each location as a separate entity. The best part is each page’s posts have their own URL and can potentially rank in search results.
Setup different phone numbers for each location. Google Plus allows businesses to create one unique listing per phone number. If your business uses a centralized toll-free number, you will need unique (preferably local) phone numbers for each location you plan on listing. These listing details are heavily integrated into Google’s search results, which can increase search visibility for locally relevant keywords and search queries, and increase click-through rate.
The key to managing multiple locations is treating each location as its own entity, without spreading your marketing efforts too thin. In addition to gaining more visitors, using local SEO on your website can also increase conversions, since your traffic will be highly relevant and localized.
