What is the naming format for locations is it brand name--Location name?

[lina_digital]

I am trying to arrive at an agreeable format for consistency across the ecosystem for our multiple locations. Is there a character limit for the location name?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Lina,

What does the street signage for the business say? That's typically the answer.

But definitely do go through Google's guidelines with a fine-toothed comb, as they offer specific advice for multi-department and multi-practitioner companies (a common scenario in medical practices). Please, read the guidelines and let the community know if questions remain after that.

[lina_digital]

This is very helpful. I work in the health industry and we have multiple locations with different names so my question is should my brand name be included in all locations naming, for example, my brand name is Nature health and one of my locations is called Martha Medical plaza should I list it as Martha Medical Plaza or Nature Health Martha Medical Plaza?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There!

I believe you're asking about how to name your multi-location business across its local business listings. The answer is, you should name it exactly as it appears in the real world, on your store signage, print marketing and the way the telephone is answered there.

So, if you own McDonald's, you're going to name the business just "McDonald's" on all of its listings for all of its locations. You wouldn't have "McDonald's San Diego", "McDonald's San Jose", "McDonald's Santa Clara", etc.

So, unless a city name is part of the real-world business name, don't included it in the name field of your citations. In fact, to do so would be considered a violation of Google's guidelines, which you can read here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB

*The one exception to this is Facebook. If you're going to create a Facebook listing for each of your locations, you DO need to add some kind of modifier to it, as Facebook won't let you create multiple listings for the same name. So, in this one case, you likely would add the city name to the business name field, but on all of your other listings, follow Google's guidelines and don't include any extraneous keywords in the business name.

Hope this helps, but if I've not clearly understood your question, please feel free to provide further details!

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Multi-location domain structure

When using the centralized approach, an ideal location URL would look something like this: https://www.yourbrand.com/new-york-city-ny/325-manhattan-midtown-east.

From a local search standpoint, it’s important to create metro and location pages so that your brand appears in SERPs for non-branded and geo-modified phrases. Those pages (e.g., Google Maps, Apple Maps) can also be associated with your local business listings by using the appropriate location URLs. It’s important to ensure that those pages also have the appropriate content, metadata and structured data in place to appear on organic local search queries.

Notice the location page is set up in a subdirectory of the root domain (not a subdomain) so that the root domain can assist this page with internal linking strategies to drive more ranking authority

If your brand is selling products in a physical store, creating pages under the primary location page to show things such as updated inventory by store location can help give the consumer more useful information as they decide where to make a purchase.

In conclusion
Local landing page subdirectories can be very beneficial for the overall health of your local SEO strategy, particularly if your brand has a multitude of brick-and-mortar locations. As Google continues to evaluate and leverage different ranking factors, centralizing your efforts with a focus on one primary domain will benefit lower-level location pages, giving the physical business locations a sound SEO foundation that is set up to allow for more prominent organic rankings.

As search engines continue to refine their ranking algorithms, the battle to drive greater traffic from the SERPs becomes more critical as time goes on. Having a solid, centralized foundation that focuses on developing individual location pages can give your brand the edge in helping capture the attention of brand-agnostic consumers in an attempt to turn them into your customers.