Multi-location SEO is local search work for a business with more than one branch: a chain of clinics, a group of estate agency offices, a franchise network, a set of gyms or restaurants. When someone searches near any of your branches, the right branch should appear, with the right address, phone number and opening hours, and a page on your site that gives them a reason to choose it.
What changes when you have more than one branch
With one premises, local SEO for a single location is mostly about one Google Business Profile, one set of listings and a handful of service pages. Add a second branch and every one of those things doubles. Add a tenth and the problem stops being optimisation and becomes record-keeping. Most of the issues I find on multi-site businesses are not ranking problems at all. They are data problems that turn into ranking problems.
A few things only appear once you have several sites:
- Branches compete with each other. Two offices five miles apart can end up targeting the same searches, so neither page is clearly the best answer.
- The truth lives in several places. Head office holds one list of branches, the website another, Google a third and the directories a fourth, and they drift apart as branches open, move and close.
- Ownership gets murky. A franchisee, a former manager or an old agency may hold the keys to a profile, and nobody at head office can change it.
- Reporting hides the weak sites. A healthy total can mask three branches that barely appear in local results.
Who this suits, and who it does not
This service is for UK businesses with two or more real premises that customers visit or that send staff out from a fixed base: multi-site clinics and dental groups, estate and letting agents, gyms, salons, restaurant groups, trade businesses with depots, and franchisors who want a consistent approach across their network. It also suits franchisees who run several territories and want their sites set up properly within the franchisor’s rules.
It is not the right fit if you have one base and want to appear in the surrounding towns. That is a single-location job, and creating a page per town without a branch there is what Google describes as doorway pages, which its spam policies treat as manipulation. If you only need one profile fixed or reinstated, my Google Business Profile optimisation service is the shorter route.
What the work covers
A single location record
Everything starts with one spreadsheet that becomes the source of truth: each branch’s trading name, address formatted to Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File, phone number, opening hours, services, profile ID, store code, page URL and who owns the profile. Every other channel is then checked against it and corrected.
Google Business Profiles for every branch
I bring all profiles into one organisation account, grouped so head office keeps ownership and branch managers or franchisees get the access they need and no more. That means recovering profiles held by former staff, merging or removing duplicate listings, choosing categories per branch, and setting special hours for bank holidays. Google offers bulk verification to businesses managing ten or more locations, which avoids verifying each branch one at a time.
Location pages that earn their place
Each real branch gets one page, linked from its profile. A good location page carries information only that branch can give: who works there, which services it offers, parking and access, nearby landmarks, local reviews and photos of the actual premises. Swapping the town name in a template produces thin content that tends to rank poorly and convert worse.
Site structure and structured data
Location pages need a clear home: a branch finder that search engines can crawl, links from relevant service pages, and sensible URLs. I add LocalBusiness structured data to each page so the details match the profile exactly. Where the branch finder is built in JavaScript or hidden behind a search box, I work through it as part of technical SEO, because pages Google cannot reach cannot rank.
Listings, reviews and links per branch
Each branch needs consistent name, address and phone details across the directories that matter in its area; NAP consistency is far harder to keep across twenty sites than one. I set up a review request process that branches can run themselves, with responses handled consistently. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, fake reviews and hidden incentives for reviews are banned practices, so the process has to be clean from the start.
Reporting by branch
I tag each profile’s website link so visits from Google Maps show up per branch in GA4, and I track visibility for each site with a local rank grid, which shows how far from the front door a branch still appears. You see which branches are strong, which are slipping and why.
How I run it
- Inventory. I build the location record and compare it with Google, your website and the main directories. This step alone usually explains most of the inconsistency.
- Access and clean-up. I sort out profile ownership, duplicates and incorrect details before writing anything new.
- Template and briefs. I design the location page template with you and write a short brief for each branch, listing the facts and photos I need from the people who work there.
- Build and link. Pages go live with structured data, the branch finder and internal links in place, and each profile is pointed at its own page.
- Listings and reviews. Citations are corrected branch by branch, starting with the weakest sites, and the review process is rolled out.
- A playbook for change. I write down what happens when a branch opens, moves, changes hours or closes, so the work does not decay the first time the estate changes.
Problems I see most often on UK multi-site businesses
- A closed branch deleted from the website while its profile still shows as open, sending customers to an empty shop.
- Every profile linking to the homepage, so a searcher in one town lands on a page about the whole company.
- One central 0800 number on every profile and page, which tells a searcher nothing about the branch near them and makes calls impossible to attribute to a site.
- Profiles created for virtual offices or registered office addresses, which breach Google’s guidelines and put the account at risk of suspension.
- Franchisees building their own websites and profiles, so the brand competes with itself in the same postcode.
- Location pages that are near-identical apart from the town name, sitting in a branch finder Google cannot crawl.
When a business rebrands or merges branch websites into one, the redirects and profile updates need planning together; that is a website migration and I treat it as one.
What you receive
- The location record, cleaned and agreed, ready for your team to maintain.
- A written audit of every profile and location page, with fixes ranked by impact.
- The location page template, a brief per branch and the structured data specification.
- A citation and review log for each branch.
- Reporting by branch at an interval we agree, in plain English, with what I did and what I plan next.
- The playbook for openings, moves and closures, plus guidelines for franchisees.
Next step
Send me your list of branches and your website. I will check a sample of profiles and location pages against each other and tell you where the biggest gaps are. You can start with a free SEO audit, or work through my local SEO checklist for one branch first to see how much needs doing across the rest.