Ranking for keywords locally with multiple locations

[IDMI.Net]

If we have a company with multiple physical locations across multiple states, but selling the same products, what would be an optimal strategy?

• All local locations have been claimed, but the site is not coming up for searches with local intent.
• If the corporate site focuses on the "products", what is the best way to get that associated with the individual locations as well?
• When implementing json+ld, would we put the specific location on the specific location pages and nothing on the rest?
• Any other tips would be great!

Thanks in advance,

[MiriamEllis]

Good Morning!

The best way to get community suggestions targeted to your unique situation is to share your website URL and the main term you're trying to rank for with us. If you can do so, that would be great, but if you're not able to share that info publicly it' okay.

I have some questions for you:

1. Are your physical locations staffed locations where your staff meets face-to-face with customers? If not, please further describe your business model.

2. You mentioned you've claimed your listings, by which am I right in guessing you mean your Google listings? If so, how recently did you do this?

3. Do you have more than one website? You mention a corporate website. Are there other websites as well?

4. Other than claiming the listings, what else are you doing to market the business? Have your location landing pages got strong, unique content on them? Have you built out citations for each location? Have you earned links to the website and the landing pages? Are you making full use of GMB features, like Google Posts, Q&A, photos, etc?

5. Are you using Google's SWIS feature to showcase your products on your Google Business Profile? Or any other GBP features to highlight your products?

6. How many locations do you have?

Please, provide as much info as you can so that the community can offer best suggestions. Thank you!

[IDMI.Net]

I realize the URL would be helpful, but I can't share at this time.

1. Yes, all locations are physically staffed.

2. Yes, the Google listings have been claimed and verified for years.

3. Just one web site with separate pages for the individual locations.  Again open to suggestions if there is a better recommended way of doing this.

4,5. at the moment, no GMB is not being taken fully advantage of.  I hadn't heard of SWIS before today.  That looks really interesting though...

6. We have 12 locations.

Thanks for the response!

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, and thank you for responding with this extra info.

So, you have an eligible local business model with GMB listings for each of your locations that aren't coming up for the local searches you feel they should or want them to. You have a single site with a landing page for each of the 12 branches, but are aware that you're not yet taking full advantage of GMB features.

There are 3 core things you need to do here.

1. First, you need to make certain that there are no obvious barriers to the local pack rankings you feel you should be earning. So, this means ruling out guideline violations, review violations, suspensions, technical website flaws and duplicate listings. It also mean ensuring that there aren't any filters at work that are causing your listings to be filtered out in favor of competitors. For example, if two businesses are in the same building or within a block or two of one another in the same Google category, one may be filtered out at the automatic zoom level of the map due to the Possum filter. Or, in some cases, a business might be located outside of Google's city borders, and therefore find it hard-to-impossible to rank within that city. In other cases, Google might be tightly clustering the results around a specific area of a city, and if you are outside of that radius, it might be a bit harder for you to compete. So, your first step is to establish where these challenges are. If they fall under the realm of bad practices, you'll need to correct them. Otherwise, it's simply important to observe how Google is behaving surrounding your desired search phrases so that you understand the lay of the land.

2. Next, you need to identify the local pack competitors for your core search phrases in each geographic market. Here is my tutorial on Finding Your True Local Competitors.  You have 12 businesses, so I'd start with just one to familiarize yourself with this process. Once you know who the top competitor is for each local pack you're hoping to get ranked in, audit them. Here is an example basic local business audit: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit Audit your location against the competitor's location and see where they are stronger than you.

3. Now that you've identified your competitors' strengths in each market, create a strategy for improving your metrics so that they match and then surpass those of your competitors.

This is the basic process for discovering why you are ranking where you are ranking in the context of each of your geo-markets and for basing a strategy for improvements on the findings of your research. If all else fails and you don't have the internal resources to undertake the work, hire a good local SEO agency to do it for you.

Hope this helps!