One of my former students, Bill Valentine of Mitra Creative, recently asked me a question regarding the importance of local search.  He mentioned that soon after he got a client set up in Google Places they were #1 for one of their keywords and they now think he is a genius!

Bill’s question was in regards to companies with multiple locations;  “… what about businesses with more than one location? I have another client now that has three offices.”

First of all… congrats to you Bill on your initial success for your client! When it comes to clients with multiple locations the process is pretty much the same.

When working with companies that have multiple locations, be sure to list each of the locations under the same Google/Bing account and be sure to list each of the clients physical addresses for each location.  It’s also important that each location has it’s own local phone number and not some main corporate number or an 800 number.  Remember that P.O. boxes are not considered an addresses so don’t use them.

Be sure to also include all relevant categories the client belongs in and to use keywords in the company description.  Make sure the description sounds natural and not stuffed with keywords for the sake of ramming it down the search engines throats.

In addition, it is important to create citations for each of the locations around the web.  Citations are basically listings of your business, its address(es) and associated local phone numbers on places like Internet Yellow Pages, Local Listing sites (like Yelp, CitySearch, HotFrog, etc) or other local directories specific to the clients market.  Be sure to fill out the company profiles as completely as possible on these sites to gain the most traction.

Using something like Universal Business Listings (UBL.org) can help standardize your listings across the web.  Being consistent with your company name, address, phone number and more is extremely important towards building trust with the search engines.  Don’t try spamming the engines by stuffing keywords into your company name either.

Lastly, be sure to list the addresses of all the individual location of your client on the main website.  A simple text listing for each location is one way.  However, using microformats is a better way to go in today’s world as the engines are starting to move more in that direction.  Try a tool like this one: http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator to help you create the microformat code which you can then place on your website.

Following these basic guidelines for clients with multiple locations can yield great success in Local Search for each of the markets your client is located in.  Continued success to you all.

Steve Scott
Tampa SEO Training Academy