Branch and store locators are usually built as interactive tools: a search box, a map, and a list of results that appears once the visitor enters a postcode. For a customer, that works well. For a search engine, the branches often do not exist at all, because they only appear after a search is made and are loaded by scripts a crawler may not run.
The result is a business with forty branches whose website gives search engines no page to rank for any of them.
The common problems
| Effect | |
|---|---|
| Branches only appear after a postcode search | Search engines see an empty locator |
| Branch details loaded by JavaScript | May not be rendered or indexed reliably |
| No individual page per branch | Nothing to rank for a town-level search |
| Branch pages with no internal links | Pages exist but are never discovered |
| Profiles linking to the locator homepage | Customers land on a search box, not their branch |
Every branch needs its own URL
The fix is to give each branch a real, indexable page at its own address, containing its name, full address, phone number, opening hours and directions in the page's actual HTML rather than loaded afterwards. The interactive locator can stay for customers who want it; it just stops being the only way to reach a branch.
Make them discoverable
Branch pages need to be linked — from a browsable directory organised by region or county, and from each other where branches are near one another — so search engines can find them without running a search. Each should carry structured data describing the location and match that branch's Business Profile exactly.
Connect profiles to branch pages
Each branch's Business Profile should link to that branch's page, not to the locator. A customer tapping through from Maps should arrive at their branch's details, not at a search box asking for their postcode again.