How multi-location SEO works
Local results are calculated for the searcher, not for the company. A chain does not hold one position across a country; each branch competes in its own patch against whoever else is nearby. So the work splits into two halves that have to agree with each other: a verified business profile for every branch, and a page on your own site for every branch that the profile can point to.
Everything else follows from keeping those pairs consistent. The name, address and phone number on the page match the profile exactly. The categories describe what that branch actually does, which is not always identical across branches. A locator page links to each branch page so they can be found by people and crawled properly, and each branch page links back to the locator rather than dead-ending.
Why it matters
Without branch-level pages, one page is asked to rank in every town, and it will not. Distance from the searcher is a strong signal, so a single head-office page tends to win only around the head office. Every branch without its own front door online is a branch relying on the sign above its window.
It also protects you from your own scale. Once there are enough branches, small inconsistencies — an old phone number here, a closed branch still live there — start costing enquiries quietly, and nobody notices because the head-office numbers look fine. Businesses that reach that point usually formalise the work as SEO across multiple locations, with an owner for each branch’s details.
Common mistakes with multi-location SEO
The first is cloning. Take one page, swap the town, publish thirty times, and you have thirty pages that say nothing and compete with each other. A branch page should carry that branch’s address, hours, staff, parking, directions, photographs and the work it actually does — details a template cannot fake.
The second is a shared contact route. If every branch page shows the same central number and the same generic form, you cannot tell which branch generated the enquiry, and the searcher cannot reach the shop they were looking at. The third is neglect: a branch closes or moves, the profile stays live, and customers arrive at a locked door and leave a review about it.
How to act on it
Start with an inventory. List every branch you operate, then match it against the profiles that exist and the pages that exist. Duplicate profiles, unclaimed profiles and pages with no profile all surface immediately, and duplicates need merging rather than deleting.
Then give each branch something only it can say, and check the details as a routine — hours before holidays, numbers after any phone change, and a quick look at each profile for edits Google or the public have applied. Where branches share a brand but differ in service, say so on the page; a customer who drives to the wrong branch is a lost customer and a bad review, and both start with a page that was written from a template. Read the neighbouring entry on NAP consistency for the detail side of this.