Sarah,

I see you placed this question almost a week ago and received no help with it. First, I should say that probably the complexity of it without a url or example.com diagram makes it quite difficult even for those who are very experienced in Local optimization. Next, I saw a red flag from the beginning and I want to be very sure I understand what you have: You have bricks and mortar stores in various locations and you have an ecommerce site that represents all of those stores (my first thought is, like a Costco or other discount warehouse merchant).

You have claimed all the locations in Google (you mentioned hummingbird) and have a local/G+ page for each and now, you are slipping in the rankings of the Local (7-pack) or for terms with keyword and geo keyword? (which or both).

Now, you want to implement a branch locator on the site and "from looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages." This practice makes you wonder what a best practice would be (correct?) If the find a location link is in a sidebar or header (not the footer as that would be poor UI/UX) it will show from any page.

To me, the second question is telling in that you are looking at someone searching for a location who is already on the site. While they will do that, you also must consider those who are searching and see your page in the SERPs. What do you want them to do? Do you want them to come to the site before they find a location? Or, are you fine with them shopping bricks and mortar first and foremost?

I would set up each location with a "location" page that is reached from a separate branch locator page that is linked to from the other pages you want searchers/shoppers to be able to find locations from.

So, if you sell furniture, I would have a link in the outdoor furniture section, the tables section, the bedroom section, etc.  and all would link to a single locator page where one could input a zip or city, state. (It could even have a list of locations if there are not too many for that.)

If the page is on your site and the onpage SEO is around Find A Store Near You for example, there is a good chance that Google will site link that page. (Now, your searchers can choose find a store or shop online.) With the individual city or store pages, I would optimize them so they work for you Local G+ and you will still have the opportunity to rank for non Local SERPS with other pages. The 7 pack is local and the other organic listings allow you more possibility to rank. Remember, typically, a page that is in the 7 pack, etc. will not show in the other organic listings.

One assumption I am making is the stores do NOT have their own websites.

Hopefully, I have given you enough or provided good questions so that with answers we can assist you further.

All the best,

Robert

Good follow up question and I probably should have mentioned it even if GWMT did not. Yes, if you are a local business use that Schema. If you are an organization use that schema. It will help with your geo targeting.

Best

Yes and No,

You said to the same website so are the urls redirecting to pages that are similar to the ones that they are directed to? Multiple must be defined, but let's say it is 30 and they are going to similar pages on the site; there is no problem.

If you simply got a bunch of sites that had lost their domain and they all have disparate content, then you could be setting yourself up for a problem. Could be is the operative term though. We took over a client who had roughly 100 "micro-sites." They were all for the same service and were not strong sites. For most we redirected only the home pages and let the other pages 404. For a few sites we let them die and for a couple the client refused to let us take them down (even though they had no traffic!).

I hope that helps a bit.

Sherry,

First, you are going to use Google US or Google Mexico. Next, you are looking for odd queries that will not exist. Try searching on ropas and then vender ropas. Or try searching on abogados. What you will see is that the results are all over the place. The most telling is ropas - search returns everything from the designer by that name, rock/paper/scissors game, ropas (as clothes in ES), etc. If you then look at abogados, you see the attorneys who get multilingual and those who don't. 
I was talking with one of our fluent Spanish speaking SEO's and we stuck in zapatos rojos. (Red Shoes). I am a big believer in what an excellent company Zappos is, but their ad returned a Spanish title with totally English ad.

If you type in English and Spanish, (which is going to be rare, I repeat - rare) you will see what comes up and you can do the KW research on the terms.

I will say to you what I say to many: If this is not something you are strong in, find a company that will work with you and let you learn as you work with your client and them. (Get an upfront agreement that they cannot approach, etc., NDA,). I can tell you I am not too proud to ask for assistance and recently contacted a European SEO firm re a Chinese site we are going to handle. I will work with them as I have no experience in that market or with Baidu directly. You cannot be afraid to say you don't know it all in this business. Trust me, I am here to learn just like you.

Best

Based solely on how you have written this, it is hard to believe it is algo change or any type of penalty. If you are ranking in the same places and CTR is same, it would seem that overall traffic for those terms is down. I realize it is not yet a month but have you checked the terms in Adwords to see if traffic is off this month?

Best,

If you do not want to have two pages, one singular and one plural, I would set up my SEO for the one with the most queries if I thought I could handle the competition and rank for the term. If I felt I would have more chance of ranking and converting with the lesser queries, I might set it up for that.

One way I look at this is to do broad and exact match to see what the difference is on each term. As an exact match (see Andrew's response) Custom cases gets more than double the queries, but the broad match custom case wins 165K to 135K. My guess is that I would go with custom cases and I believe I would be served up more times in broad match. Just IMO.

With either case, I would also insure there was the opportunity to rank for both by including say an H2 on the secondary, etc. (also use that keyword within context in the page).

You, obviously, could set up two pages if you felt one would not dilute the other. I always worry about dilution on plurals though.

Best