Google wants to know that it’s promoting legitimate businesses in its local results but fake and hijacked business profiles are a real problem. In 2019! Google Maps had an estimated 11 million illegitimate local listings so the search giant has to take steps to identify dodgy business profiles.
Consistency is a key signal for legitimacy and Google wants to see the exact same business information present across all of your profiles. This includes your Google Business Profile listings for each location! your website! social media profiles! directory listings and anywhere else your business information displays.
Google is quite strict about consistency! too
For example! you need to have the same overseas data formatting for phone numbers! addresses! URLs and other details – so don’t start phone numbers with +44 in some places and 0 in others or use Street in some addresses and St. in others.
Earlier! we talked about the challenge of managing local SEO at scale and this is the level of detail you have to maintain across your profiles for each location.
5. Global brands with international locations
The challenges of managing local SEO learn exactly how we made list of phone number last month for multiple locations are multiplied for global brands that need to optimise for international locations. In terms of location targeting! the same general rules apply so you’ll be creating profiles for each business location and striving for the same level of consistency where possible.
Local SEO at the international scale brings a bunch of added complexities! though:
- Languages: Unless you exclusively operate in English-speaking territories! you need to translate and localise your web presence for each language audience.
- Platforms: While Google is the top search engine in most countries! it hasn’t quite conquered all of them and other platforms like Yelp and TripAdvisor aren’t established everywhere.
- Features: Some features in Google Maps and other platforms aren’t available yet in all countries.
- Consumer behaviour: Local search habits and consumer behaviour varies across markets.
- Website localisation: Each target location and/or language requires localised content on your website.
- Technical SEO: Managing multi-locational and multilingual websites involves a lot of work (crawlability! indexing! link profiles! audits! loading times! etc.).
- Interaction: You need a team in each target market to respond to reviews! Q&As and other interactions with local audiences – in their native language.
All of these challenges are manageable with the right processes but they each add a significant amount of work to a multi-location strategy that’s already intense.
6. Businesses without physical locations
Most local SEO advice is geared towards singapore number businesses with physical locations that welcome customers through the door: shops! restaurants! local facilities! etc. Unfortunately! this ignores a common type of multi-location business – the kind that provides services by visiting their customers or an off-site location.
This includes a wide range of service businesses and sole traders! such as plumbers! roofers and mobile hairdressers – any service provider that visits customers across multiple locations.
This also applies to businesses that provide services at off-site locations – for example! marquee hire! catering services and events companies.
Whatever line of business you’re in! local
SEO is challenging when you have to optimise for locations where you don’t have a physical business address. This is because local search relies heavily on the user’s physical location at the time of their search so you have to focus on search queries that specify location – eg: “emergency plumber London”.
To help overcome this! you can create location pages on your website that target each area! helping to increase your relevance for local searches. We’ll be talking more about this in our next mutli-location blog so keep an eye out.
Need help with your multi location SEO?
If you need help with local SEO for multiple locations! we work with many multi location businesses so are perfectly placed to help you get found online. To chat to our team! contact us on 02392 830281 or submit your details below and we’ll call you.