We're opening another location. What do we do before it opens?

Short answer

Start about 90 days out. A location that goes live with no profile, no citations and no page spends its first six months invisible while paying rent.

An operator planning to grow from six locations to thirty asked for a repeatable launch package rather than improvising each time. That's the right instinct — the work is identical every time, which means it should be a checklist.

90 days out

Market research: what the local terms actually are, and who currently owns them
Confirm the address, suite number and city name exactly as the postal service writes it — this one decision haunts everything downstream

60 days out

Location page built, with real local content and LocalBusiness schema
Business Profile created, verified, categories and services set
Internal links pointing at the new page from the locations hub and relevant service pages

30 days out and launch

Citations built across the aggregators and top directories, all matching exactly
Local tracking set up so you can tell this location's performance from the others
Opening announcement — a press release and local outreach, which is the one moment a new location is genuinely newsworthy

Then the boring part that decides it: reviews. A new profile with no reviews next to a competitor with 200 loses, regardless of how good the page is. Ask from day one, in person, at the moment the job finishes.

What we'd actually do

Profile and citation setupThe launch layer, done by hand, per location.Open →Local SEO per location$990 first location, $330 for each one after.Open →Location pagesBuilt to rank, with schema that matches the page.Open →Plan a launchTell me the date and I'll work backwards from it.Open →

Follow-ups

How early is too early for the Business Profile?

Google wants you open. Create it when you have a confirmed address and date, and expect verification to take longer than you'd like.

Do new locations need their own page?

Yes, with content that differs beyond the town name. A page that's a find-and-replace of another one competes with it.

Want this done on your site?

Tell me what's going on. You'll get a straight answer, including if that answer is that you don't need me.