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09.22.09 Optimizing Your Site For Mutiple Local Locations  By Jon HinesA recent question from an SEO forum asking about if you have a local business with multiple location. How do you optimize for those separate locations? The best approach is to have separate pages within the same domain. An example would be www.yoursite.com: • www.yoursite.com/seattle_windows • www.yoursite.com/everett_windows • www.yoursite.com/charlotte_windows Now within each pages you should have the following optimized: • Optimized Title Tags -'Business Name + Service Type, City, Province/State' | Keyword 1 & Keyword 2'. Eg:'Joe's Bakery, Toronto, ON | The Best Wedding Cakes and Twinkies in Toronto'. • H1 & H2 Tags - Use header tags that reflect your full business name and service type. Eg: ' Joe's Bakery, Toronto, Ontario', • Full Business Address - Include this in a easy to use hCard microformat. hCard may help the search engines separate address information such as business name, street address, locality, and postal/zip codes. • Regional/Local Phone Number - Local phone numbers build trust - both from customers, and from search engines. Often, businesses such as plumbers only have one service location but multiple local phone numbers to gain trust from small town customers, which they then forward to a singular call centre. ALWAYS use a local phone number on each landing page in the format (123) 345-6789. • Services Offered& Business Hours - Services often differ from location to location based as do business hours. Save your customers time and add to your body content by adding this valuable information. • Embed Google Maps on your Landing Page - This is imperative to include on your landing page. Not only will it provide an interactive way for a customer to map their way to your location, it will also count towards a better ranking in the Google local ten-pack listings. • Include Driving Directions Anyways - Unless your customers are relatively savvy with the concept of using Google Maps to get driving directions to your location, you're best off by providing a brief paragraph of directions from the NSEW (North, South, East, West) end of your city. • Single Line Business Address in Footer - Having your address in the format 'Business Name + Service, Street Address, City, Province/State, Country' can provide an easy format for search engines to pick up on your address. • Meta Tag Descriptions with Local Address + Phone Number - This one's self-explanatory. If you've got an additional phone tracking number handy, you can include the spare phone number in your meta tags to see if customers would rather call you via seeing the search results, or prefer to click on the results and view your landing page. This tactic is also specially useful for folks that use Skype (which makes phone numbers clickable) and on the iPhone. • URL Naming Structure - Last but not least, it's important to include keywords in your url. Separate keywords by using hyphen's and only include your most important keywords minus your business name, unless you have a highly recognized brand: Eg: domain.com/toronto-rexdale-ontario-bakery.html Another creative approach is the use CMS sites (blogs). Don't let blogs site fool you, its more than just a web log. The platform is easy to use you can add content on the fly. CMS platform under the hood is totally SEO friendly and the major search engines like Bing, and Google loves the recency. Comments About the Author: Jon Hines is an SEO/SEM consultant that helps businesses become findable on the internet thru organic search, paid search, and social media since 04. Check out his site at Seattle SEO Services. |
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