Short answer
Each location needs its own accurately verified Google Business Profile, its own dedicated location page with genuinely unique content, and consistent business information across every location, while avoiding duplicate or near-identical content between location pages that can cause them to compete with each other rather than each ranking independently. A little upfront structure saves considerable rework as the group grows further. None of this is complicated, it just requires consistency applied across every single site.
One profile, one page, per physical location
Every physical location needs its own separate, properly verified Google Business Profile, never a single shared profile or duplicate listings for the same address. Similarly, each location should have its own dedicated page on your website with a unique address, phone number, and enough genuinely distinct content that it doesn't read as a copy-pasted template with the suburb name swapped.
Avoid location pages competing with each other
A common mistake is creating near-identical location pages differing only in the suburb name, which can cause Google to struggle to determine which page should rank for a given search, sometimes resulting in neither ranking well. Genuinely differentiated content, specific to that location's services, practitioners, and any local considerations, avoids this internal competition.
Keep information consistent across every location
Your practice group's name should be formatted identically across every location's profile and listings, and any shared services or credentials should be described consistently. Inconsistency across locations creates the same trust and ranking problems inconsistency causes for a single practice, just multiplied across every site.
Coordinate without centralising everything
A central team can and should oversee brand consistency and technical standards across all locations, but each location benefits from at least some location-specific input, practitioner details, local service nuances, genuine local reviews, rather than being managed as an entirely generic, centrally-produced template applied uniformly regardless of the actual differences between sites.
A practical way to manage this without a large in-house team
A small practice group without dedicated marketing staff can still manage this well with a simple system: a shared checklist covering profile completeness, review response and citation consistency, reviewed monthly per location by whoever is responsible for that site, combined with a central point of contact who maintains brand-level consistency and catches issues, like duplicate listings, that individual location staff might not notice. This does not require sophisticated software, just a consistent, repeatable process applied to every location rather than an ad hoc approach that varies site to site.
Handling a location that consistently underperforms the others
It is common for one location in a multi-site group to consistently lag behind the others despite an apparently identical approach, and the cause is often local rather than structural: a more competitive nearby market, a newer location without an established review history yet, or simply less consistent day-to-day management of that specific site's profile and content. Diagnosing this properly requires comparing the underperforming location against its own specific local competitors rather than against your other, better-performing locations, which may simply operate in easier markets.