How to Track Local SEO for Multiple Locations

Need to reach more customers in different towns or cities? Let’s say we run a plumbing business and want to grow beyond our current area. With the help of keyword research, we can find out where people are searching for our services and focus on those areas. This guide will help us get started. We’ll learn how to search keywords for local areas and how to track our SEO across different places.

Why Track SEO in Multiple Locations?

Search results on Google can change depending on where someone is searching from. For example, a person in downtown Philadelphia may see different results than someone in Bryn Mawr, Camden, or Collingswood. So, it’s important to know how our website ranks in each area we want to serve.

There are two main cases where tracking SEO in many locations is helpful:

• Businesses with many locations: If we have more than one office or store and each has its own Google Business Profile, we should check how each one shows up in local searches.
• Service-based businesses: If we serve many cities from one location—like one plumbing office but customers in nearby towns—we need to track our SEO performance in each city to know how visible we are.

What Can Local SEO Tools Help Us Do?

We’ll look at three tools from Semrush that help with local SEO.

Search for Keywords in Local Areas

Before we track how we rank, we need to see how many people are searching in each city. Keyword research helps us find out how often people type in things like “plumber near me.”

For example, if there are 200 searches each month, it means 200 people are looking for plumbers in that area.

Most keyword tools show results for the whole country, but Semrush lets us check by city or region. Here’s how to see local keyword data in Semrush:

• Open the Keyword Overview tool.
• Type the keyword you want to check (for example, “plumber near me”).
• Click the location drop-down and type in a city, county, or zip code.

Now, we can see local details like how many people search that keyword in San Francisco, plus other helpful info like how hard it is to rank and how much the cost per click is.

We can also compare these local numbers to the national average. For example, the cost per click in San Francisco might be higher than the U.S. average ($40.14 vs. $20.57).

Want to compare other cities?

Just change the location and the data updates. This lets us see which cities have more interest.

For example, the search term “plumber near me” might have different popularity and competition in different suburbs around Philadelphia.

Do this for other services we offer, and see where the interest is highest. If one city has a lot of searches, we could create a webpage for that area or update our Google Business Profile to focus on it.

Check SEO Rankings in Every City

Once we finish our keyword research, the next step is to track how our website ranks in different cities.

Follow these steps:

• Start a Position Tracking campaign and choose the city you want to focus on.
• Add the keywords you want to track and begin the campaign.
• After it starts, click the link under the project name and look for “+ Add new target” to track other cities too.

Find Competitors in Every City

When we track SEO in different cities, we also find out who our main competitors are in each place. Most cities will have their own top-ranking businesses, so it’s useful to know who we’re up against.

1. For Competitors in Different Cities or Devices: Use Position Tracking

Once we set up our campaign with our keywords and cities, the Competitors Discovery report will show us the top-ranking businesses in each place.

2. For Competitors in Neighborhoods or Small Areas: Use Map Rank Tracker

This tool shows rankings on a grid over a map, so we can see how we’re doing in specific areas. It also shows which businesses rank the highest nearby.

Use Position Tracking to See Competitors Across Cities

If we want to know which businesses rank high in different cities, Position Tracking helps us do that. After setting it up, we can open the Competitors Discovery report to see who’s on top in each area we track.

Use Map Rank Tracker to Find Nearby Competitors

If we run a small local business like a shop or café, it’s more helpful to track competitors close to us. That’s because most customers are only looking for places nearby.

For example, someone searching “coffee near me” won’t compare us to a shop in a different town. To see who we’re competing with nearby, we can use the Map Rank Tracker.

Here’s how to set it up:

• Enter our business name and location.
• Add our keywords or use the AI-suggested ones.
• Choose our service area radius (like a few blocks or a whole city).
• Pick our grid size (5×5, 7×7, up to 15×15).
• Decide how often we want to track (daily, weekly, or monthly).
• Then hit Run campaign and wait a few minutes.

Once the tool collects the data, we’ll see a Heatmap report. On the left side, we can see the list of nearby competitors. Click any name to see their heatmap and compare it with ours.

We can also go to the Competitors tab and view how much attention each business is getting in our area.

This data helps us improve our visibility in places that matter — like the streets and neighborhoods where our customers are.

Check What Pages Help Competitors Rank

Want to know why another business ranks better than us? We can learn a lot by checking their best landing pages.

Here’s how to find that in Semrush:

• Open the Pages tab in Position Tracking.
• Choose a competitor’s website from the dropdown.
• Sort the list by traffic or keyword count.
• Click on the top pages to learn what content works best.

By seeing which pages bring in the most traffic, we can get ideas to improve our own site. Look at how they use keywords, get backlinks, or answer customer questions.

Track Your SEO on Google Maps

To see how we rank on Google Maps, use the Map Rank Tracker tool. This tool shows a heatmap, making it easy to understand where we rank well and where we need improvement. It’s very useful for service-area businesses because it shows our visibility around town. If we find that one part of the city isn’t doing well, we can take steps like:

• Getting backlinks from that area
• Asking for reviews from nearby customers
• Running Google Ads in that area

Later, we can check the tool again to see if our changes worked.

Track Google Business Profile Views for Every Location

Local’s GBP Optimization tool helps us see how our Google Business Profiles are doing, even better than Google’s own reports.

With this tool, we can:

• Track how often our profiles show up in Google Search and Maps
• Compare results over days, weeks, or months (up to 24 months of data!)
• Monitor actions like website visits, direction requests, phone calls, and messages
• Spot which locations are doing well and which need more work

By checking these numbers often, we can make smart changes to get more views and more customers.

Win the SEO Game, No Matter Where Your Customers Are

Running SEO in many cities used to be hard. But now, whether we own a chain of shops or a small local café, Semrush makes it easier to manage our SEO everywhere.

We can:

• Track progress in all cities that matter to us
• See where we rank on the map
• Build a strategy based on real data