What is the best SEO practice for listing multiple locations from the same business online?

[chris.oursbourn]

Hello!

The church I work for is launching its third location and we are needing to figure out what the best SEO practice would be when it comes to to listing all three of our locations online. Currently, we are listing the two locations we have as "Church Name - South Campus" and "Church Name - West Campus."

Going forward, would it be better to list our 3 location names as:

James River Church - South Campus, James River Church - West Campus, James River Church - North Campus

or

James River Church South Campus, James River Church West Campus, James River Church North Campus

or

list all three locations as "James River Church"

Thank you for any advice you can give me!

[RyanScollon]

Hey Steven,

It's a tough one really. The Google guidelines state that you should not add unnecessary details such as the business location:

Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g. "Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters" instead of "Google") by including marketing taglines, shop codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions or containment information (e.g. "Chase ATM in Duane Reade") is not permitted.

But I can also understand why you would want to add it, especially if they are located fairly close together as it would help users determine which church to search for.

[varun1800]

Hi Steve,

You can use the same name for all the locations but with the different address.

For better understanding, you can read the Google's guideline here:

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Steven,

Ryan & Varun are correct in the quote of the Google guidelines. You just want to use the name of the church across all three locations unless the churches officially rename themselves with modifiers. You might need to research this a bit. I've never marketed a church and I'm not sure how they are legally registered. Do they have some form of county registration or license? If so, and they feel that their congregation members may be getting misdirected or confused, they might want to consider officially rebranding the three locations so that their location names are part of the church names. So sorry, but I've only worked with commercial entities and am not sure how churches register themselves in communities. I'd look into this, because I think there may be a legitimate concern here, given that the website doubtless differentiates between the 3 locations in the way they are referring to them, and ideally, you'd like their citations to match that, so that James River Church West Campus is being referred to exactly that way, everywhere on the web. Time to do some research Good luck!