SEO Best Practices for Multiple Locations?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  James Maabadi: SEO Best Practices for Multiple Locations?
  
  I have a company website with 5 locations (5 different cities across the state). Each location has a dedicated page on the website, local phone number and most have their own business profiles/pages (G+, FB, Yelp).
  
  Which location phone number to use in header?
  Which location social profile links to use on homepage?
  Which location schema markup to use on homepage?
  
  There is one location we'd like to target and it's the most competitive, should it be used for the homepage???
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  Amit Kumar: That one location which you want target should be on home page, in your social media profile you can link your other pages as well.
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  Ryan Cramer: Obviously, on your home page as well as the supporting pages, you'll want to focus on your main location in order to help you compete.  ;If possible, on the "satellite" location pages, I'd suggest you use the information for the individual locations though.
  Why? "Every page is a landing page". If done properly, you can get the local placement for the less competitive locations higher in the SERPs - leading to more visitors and more value to the website as a whole. ;
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  Suraj Gadage: +James Maabadi Let me add my piece of advice.The current structure of your website is perfect. You have dedicated landing pages for each location that you can use to optimize for local SEO. Now answers to your questions:
  
  Which location phone number to use in the header?
  - Local phone number dedicated to a specific location
  
  Which location social profile links to use on the homepage?
  - Location specific social media profiles
  
  Which location schema markup to use on the homepage?
  - For location specific pages, you must use the local business schema and for homepage you can use common schema tags like site navigation, footer etc.
  
  There is one location, we'd like to target and it's the most competitive, should it be used for the homepage??? ;
  - Yes. You can use that location name in your homepage title. However, you need to ensure you target different keyword sets on the homepage title and location page title. Because, you don't your two website pages competing with each other in search results.
  
  Also, focus your off-page efforts more on the specific location (50% one location and 50% three locations) than others. Check if you have new local content creation opportunity around the competitive location. This could help you to stand out from the crowd and bring additional qualified traffic on the website.
  
  Hope this helps!
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:31:41 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/seo_best_practices_for_multiple_locations +James Maabadi
  
  If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit.
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  Tim Colling: +James Maabadi ;thanks for asking this question.  ;I have a nearly identical situation with one of my clients.  ;Would you mind sharing the URL of your client's website so that I can see what you've done?
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  James Maabadi: Thank you all for your time and input! I of course wanted to keep it structured and organized with the multiple locations. But I also realize the value of the homepage and thought it would be easier to rank for the competitive location if I utilized it for that location.