10 Local SEO Best Practices for Multi-Location Businesses
Want to dominate local search across all your locations? These 10 proven strategies go beyond the basics to help you build a scalable, search-optimized presence that delivers results. From schema to reviews to mobile UX, these are the essentials no multi-location brand can afford to ignore.
At Adcetera, we’ve guided enterprise and mid-market brands through the complexities of local SEO for years. While Google’s documentation offers a solid foundation, real-world success depends on how you execute and scale those principles across dozens — or hundreds — of locations. That’s why this guide combines official best practices with hard-won insights from the field, giving you a smarter, more strategic path to local visibility.
And when you’re ready to go further, explore Adcetera's local SEO services to unlock growth with tailored support, automation, and deep market expertise.
1. Complete and Verify Every Google Business Profile
What Google says: “Verify your business locations so they’re more likely to show in local search results across Google products, like Maps and Search.”
Adcetera's take: We know, it might seem obvious, but claiming and verifying each location’s Google Business Profile (GBP) is foundational.
Google prioritizes verified listings in local results. A complete profile with accurate name/address/phone (NAP), hours, and categories improves search visibility and customer trust across every location.
For multilocation brands, managing hundreds of GBPs can get complex. Leveraging tools like Google Business Profile API is essential for streamlining bulk updates and ensuring consistent, up-to-date data across all locations.
Best practices include automating listing management, maintaining uniform formatting for NAP details, and setting a regular cadence for reviewing and refreshing business info.
2. Build Dedicated Location Pages with NAP Details
What Google says: “This information is typically found in a business's location page or a 'contact us' section of a company's website. When Google correctly identifies these pages and is able to extract the relevant information from them, it is more likely to surface that information to searchers looking for the business.”
Adcetera’s take: Location pages are essential for connecting searchers to the right branches. Each page should feature complete NAP details, unique localized content, clear calls to action, and a Google Map embed. This ensures visibility in search and delivers a strong user experience.
Avoid copy-pasting content across locations — Google sees that as thin or duplicative. Instead, use flexible page templates with custom content like staff bios, customer reviews, or local service highlights to make each page distinct.
For multilocation brands, success depends on internal workflows that ensure updates — like new openings, relocations, or hours changes — are reflected promptly and accurately. Centralizing data and automating content updates through your CMS or store locator platform helps maintain consistency at scale.
3. Implement Local Business Schema Markup
What Google says: “With Local Business structured data, you can tell Google about business hours, different departments within a business, reviews (if your site captures reviews about other businesses), and more.”
Adcetera's take: Schema markup is a way to label the content on your website so search engines better understand what your business is about. For local SEO is LocalBusiness schema, which tells key details like your business name, address, phone number, hours, and more.
You add this information directly to each location page’s code. This helps Google connect your site to relevant local search features like map listings, business panels, and reviews, reinforcing your visibility and the accuracy of your data.
For multilocation brands, managing structured data across hundreds of pages can be complex and resource intensive. Each location requires accurate, location-specific schema markup to help Google understand and surface the correct details.
To scale efficiently, brands should centralize business data, automate schema generation through a CMS or data layer, and regularly validate the markup using Google’s Rich Results Test.
4. Solicit and Respond to Customer Reviews on Google
What Google says: “High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location.”
Adcetera’s take: Reviews are a direct ranking factor in local SEO. Google values businesses that respond to feedback. Generating and managing reviews by location builds trust and authority, and improves conversion rates.
All reviews are valuable. Positive reviews are great but negative reviews offer an opportunity to show customers that you listen, care, and take action. Responding constructively to criticism reinforces your reputation and can turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal advocate.
For multilocation companies, managing reviews at scale is challenging, especially when each response should feel thoughtful, authentic, and tailored. Scaling meaningful responses can be supported with review management tools, templated tone guidelines, and localized messaging strategies to ensure each customer feels heard while preserving brand voice.
5. Use UTM Parameters to Track Local Campaigns
What Google says: “By adding UTM campaign parameters to the destination URLs ... you can see which campaigns refer traffic.”
Adcetera's take: UTM tracking doesn’t affect rankings but is critical for measuring performance at the location level. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, a simple code you add to URLs to identify how traffic reaches your site.
By tagging links from Google Business Profiles, local ads, or local social posts, you gain insight into which channels and locations are driving visits and conversions for analytics, attribution, and proving the ROI.
For multilocation branches, a best practice is to use UTM's with a standardized naming taxonomy that makes data easier to aggregate, compare, and analyze. A planned structure, such as including location name, campaign type, and source, ensures you can track performance by branch and channel.
6. Maintain Consistent NAP Citations Across the Web
What Google says: “Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business, from across the web, like links, articles, and directories.”
Adcetera's take: Consistency across platforms (directories, social media, websites, and local listings) means using the exact same business name, address, and phone number (NAP) format for each location — everywhere it appears.
This consistency directly contributes to your business's prominence, one of Google's key local ranking factors. When Google sees the same accurate business details repeated across trusted sources, it increases confidence that your business is legitimate and well-established, which boosts your local search visibility.
For multilocation brands with hundreds of locations, even small inconsistencies (like "Ave" vs. "Avenue" or missing suite numbers) can fragment your online presence and confuse search engines.
Disjointed data weakens Google’s trust in your listings, impacting local rankings and potentially misrouting customers. To maintain consistency, brands should centralize data entry, automate updates through a trusted listings platform, and audit key directories regularly.
7. Earn Quality Backlinks to Your Local Pages
What Google says: “The vast majority of the new pages Google finds every day are through links...”
Adcetera's take: Backlinks signal credibility and relevance. For local SEO, it's not about domain authority, it’s about local relevance.
Links from local business, local press, community organizations, chambers of commerce, and local blogs helps establish your business’s presence in a specific geographic area. Even no-follow links can be valuable if they come from local sources that reflect community involvement.
Search engines use these signals to assess prominence, especially when the content and context tie your business to a real-world location. Local partnerships and citations can therefore help location pages stand out, even in highly competitive markets.
For multilocation brands, earning locally relevant backlinks often requires branches actively engaging in the communities they serve. Participating in local events, sponsoring neighborhood initiatives, or partnering with local organizations not only builds goodwill, but also creates opportunities for meaningful local links.
8. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Users
What Google says: “We will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal... will have a significant impact.”
Adcetera's take: Good mobile UX is essential, as most local queries are commonly made by phones on map applications to search for nearby services or directions, especially when they’re ready to act, such as before visiting a store or making a purchase.
Each location page must therefore be fast, responsive, and easy to navigate on phones — with clear calls to action, driving directions, and localized content that matches the user needs.
For multi-location companies, that means treating mobile as the primary user experience environment for all UX, messaging, and technical optimization decisions.
9. Create Unique Local Content (Avoid “Doorway” Pages)
What Google says: “Doorway pages that are created solely for search engines can harm the quality of the user's search experience.”
Adcetera's take: Google does not like thin or duplicated pages, often referred to as "doorway pages" or pages created solely to rank for specific search queries without offering distinct value to the user.
For local SEO, doorway pages are a risk if every location page uses nearly identical content with only the city name swapped.
Each page should instead contain original content specific to that location’s team, offerings, community involvement, and customer experience. This ensures a better user experience and signals authenticity to Google.
For multilocation companies, creating unique, high-value pages for each location can be resource-intensive without the systems in place, including copywriting that takes a localized approach for distinctive content at scale.
10. Embed Google Maps for Easy Directions
What Google says: “Click ‘Embed a map,’ … copy HTML.”
Adcetera's take: Embedding maps enhances UX and helps customers easily navigate to your location. For local SEO, maps are a fundamental component of a location page because they allow users to assess convenience, such as proximity, traffic, and route options, directly within their decision-making moment.
Including an embedded Google Map not only provides helpful functionality but also signals geographic relevance to Google, reinforcing your location’s visibility in local search.
Multilocation companies need user testing and quality controls to confirm that map embeds load quickly, are centered on the correct location, and integrate seamlessly with mobile devices.
Ready to Take Local SEO to the Next Level?
The strategies outlined here aren’t just theory — they’re the real-world tactics we implement every day to help brands like yours win in local search. Whether you're managing five locations or five hundred, success depends on having the right systems, content, and expertise in place to scale with confidence.
At Adcetera, we specialize in building customized, high-performance local SEO programs for enterprise and multi-location businesses. Contact us or visit our SEO services page to learn how we can help you build a smarter local strategy that drives visibility, traffic, and revenue.