Running an effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign requires creating content and then ranking that content in the search engines.
Ideally, all of your webpages would show up in search results, but that’s unlikely.
While some of your content probably won’t make it into the search engine results pages (SERPs) for every search term, you can get some powerful SEO leverage by creating a local landing page for multiple locations applicable to your local business.
Using location landing pages will boost your SEO power exponentially and will help you rank higher in mobile searches.
Since the majority of internet users browse the web on a mobile device, location landing pages just might be the “SEO secret weapon” you’ve been looking for.
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What are location landing pages?
A location landing page is a single page on your website with content specifically tailored to represent one of your physical locations. For example, if a retail giant has 2,000 nationwide locations, they’d have 2,000 individual location landing pages – one for each local store.
The purpose of having location landing pages is to capitalize on local search.
Optimizing for local search is essentially SEO service that targets local markets. Targeting local markets lowers the competition for keywords, it’s easier to rank for popular keywords and phrases, and it makes content more relevant to visitors.
Local landing pages allow you to publish additional web pages with unique content
When you use location landing pages, you can instantly multiply the number of webpages you have without it being duplicate content. Publishing more content will help you rank better in the search engines. However, the real opportunity is to reach people performing local searches.
With location landing pages, each page will contain the same basic information about your business, but will also have unique content tailored to the location the page represents.
For example, say you run a business selling inflatable rafts and have two locations – one in Baton Rouge and one in Miami.
On each location landing page, you’ll publish general information about your inflatable rafts along with ideas for where people can use their rafts. These ideas will be based on local attractions like rivers, lakes, and water parks. This way, no two local landing pages will be the same.
Location landing pages give you more opportunity to be seen in search results
Location landing pages aren’t just more pages for you to figure out how to rank. They’re actually favored by Google, and as a result, they’re easier to rank.
Since a user’s physical location is accounted for in Google’s algorithm, search terms involving types of local businesses, specific products, and in-person services are more likely to return location landing pages than other web pages.
If you don’t have location landing pages, when users perform these kinds of searches, your competitors who do have location landing pages will be favored in the SERPs and will get all the traffic.
Google favors local landing pages
Another thing to consider is that you can’t just depend on your main web content to rank for related searches. Your main web content is unlikely to be served to people in the SERPs for location-related searches. Google actually favors location landing pages in local searches. Here’s how local searches work.
- A user who is logged into their Google account searches for “night club.”
- Google serves results to that user based on the zip code set in the user’s account, including what you might have listed in your NAP (name, address, phone) in your Google Business Profile.
- Location landing pages belonging to night clubs in that user’s area are returned in the results.
- Google knows when a night club’s location landing page is relevant to the user because the page contains the night club’s address, zip code, and phone number (including area code).
- Google also uses latent semantic indexing (LSI) to determine whether a night club’s location landing page is relevant to the user. This is why you always want to talk about major attractions in the area, because Google’s LSI algorithm will use that information to determine relevance for the user. The more related content you write about, the more Google will know your content is relevant to a given search.
When you create location landing pages, the content will be unique to each page.
Each page will be served to local users based on their physical location and your LSI-optimized content.
Location pages help you bypass high competition general search terms
Location landing pages will help you capture traffic from users logged into Google looking for nearby businesses in your industry. The fact that a user is logged in will automatically narrow down the possible search results they’ll generate. This is how you can bypass high competition general search terms that you don’t stand a chance trying to rank for in the SERPs.
For example, say you run a nail salon business with five locations in New York: Buffalo, Albany, Montgomery, New York City, and Brooklyn. If you try to rank your website for general nail salon keywords, you’re not going to rank high without a multi-million-dollar budget.
On the other hand, when you create a location landing page for each nail salon location using the city as a keyword, you can target people in each city almost effortlessly.
For example, when a user in Brooklyn searches for “nail salon” or “nail salon near me,” and your webpage includes information about Brooklyn, they’re more likely to see your Brooklyn landing page in the search engine results. Local landing pages without location-specific information are not prioritized for these types of searches.
11 tips for creating local landing pages
Are you ready to start building out your location landing pages so you can generate more traffic, leads, and sales?
Here are 11 tips to get started.
1. Plan out your localized content
Make a list of the content you want to put on each location landing page. Start with the basics:
- Your company’s name
- Your locations’ name, if different from your company’s name
- The location’s address
- The location’s phone number
- Hours of operation
- Management contact (if appropriate)
Once you get the basics planned out, plan to include link citations to any related social accounts. Make a list of all social media pages you want to include, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, Instagram, etc.
Next, document all the special information you want to include. For example, if you’re a venue that hosts special events, plan to link to your event calendar if you have one. If you run specials for seniors or military personnel one day each week, make sure to include that in your content, too.
If you take reservations, invest in reservation software so people can book directly online. Adding convenience to your pages is one of the fastest ways to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Often the first place to start in your localized content plan is with a comprehensive SEO audit.
Plan your landing page content and copy
Once you have a list of your localized information, it’s time to plan out your content. This is where you’ll determine whether or not your location landing pages will simply contain location information, or if you’re going to create additional value for your visitors (and search engines).
One of the best ways to add content and value is by telling visitors why you’re the best choice in your industry. However, if you want to use the opportunity to get ranked higher in the SERPs, you’ll need to write at least a short article that provides value to your visitors.
Creating local landing pages that contain more than contact information can be time-consuming and difficult if you’re not into website development. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of doing this yourself, contact us at SEO.co and we’ll help you create beautiful, professional SEO-optimized landing pages for various locations.
2. Aim to make your location landing pages authoritative
Authoritative content will get you sales and leads, period. If you’re going to work hard to rank your local landing pages, you also need to create authoritative content. However, it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t interfere with a visitor’s ability to find your contact information and learn about your business.
The best way to accomplish this is to publish your contact and location information first, along with the information about your business. Place all additional content underneath this section, but also keep your business name, address, and phone number in the header and footer of every location landing page.
Just like you’d do with any other webpage, make your local landing pages as authoritative as possible. This will get you more traffic, quality organic backlinks, and will support your overall SEO strategy.
Authoritative content can be short or long – it’s the content that counts
Authoritative pages don’t have to be lengthy. If long content is appropriate for your business and industry, by all means, write up 2,000-word posts. However, if short content is more appropriate, maximize the content you post.
For example, say you run a coaching business with coaches located across several states. People looking for a business coach won’t necessarily be interested in reading extremely long content. They will, however, be interested in learning something from you that will give them a glimpse of what you can offer them as a paying client.
In this case, you could publish a 500-word article providing tips for maximizing productivity. That kind of content would speak to just about everyone looking for a business coach, and 500 words would be short enough to hold their attention.
To make your content authoritative, give people your best advice. Give them advice they’d expect to pay for because that’s how you’ll capture more leads and gain authority in the search engines at the same time.
3. Create location landing pages on social sites
Once you have your location landing pages on your website, you need similar pages on social sites. This will help you gain visibility in the search engines when those pages rank, and it will also help your website rank.
With social sites, create one listing for each location. For example, if you have five locations you should create five individual Google Business listings, five Facebook local pages, and five Yelp business listings. At the very least, prioritize making your Google Business listings.
Google My Business listings carry significant weight in terms of ranking. According to SEO experts from Moz, Google My Business signals like proximity, categories, and keywords are factored in at 25.12%.
Google Business listings are served above the actual search results, which means users see business listings first. When relevant business listings are served, users are more likely to click on a business listing than scroll down to view the search results.
Having a Google Business listing for each of your locations will greatly improve your chances of getting traffic. If you don’t create a business listing for each of your locations, you’ll never show up in the business results and users will click through to your competitors’ website instead of yours.
4. Link to your social sites from your location landing pages
Once you create your business listings on various social sites, make sure you link to those listings from your local landing pages. For example, say you’ve created the following social listings:
- Google My Business listing(s)
- Yelp Business listing(s)
- Facebook local page(s)
On each location landing page, build links to the corresponding business listings on your social sites. For instance, your San Francisco location landing page should link to your San Francisco Google Business listing.
Linking to your local listings from your location landing pages will help your site build authority in the search engines, and building authority helps your SEO.
5. Create local landing pages even if you don’t perform SEO
If you aren’t running an SEO campaign, you should still create location landing pages. In addition to naturally helping with SEO, having location landing pages will help your website visitors find your nearest location.
Get in touch with your web developer, or contact us for help. You need a way for visitors to find their preferred location right on your website without making them sift through individually listed states and cities.
If you don’t have many locations, you can probably get away with adding links to your locations in your main menu or footer. However, if you have more than a few locations, you’ll want to create a dynamic system for users to enter their zip code to find nearby locations.
6. Get creative with your keywords and phrases
Stand-alone keywords are good, but they need to be used in context. Get creative with how you phrase your page titles and headers that describe your business. For example, if you sell wool socks in Alaska, your main header could be, “We Make the Warmest Wool Socks in Alaska.”
7. Embed an interactive map on each location page
Maps are wonderful tools for helping your visitors find your location pages. If you have a development budget, hire someone to create a custom Google Map widget. If you don’t have a budget, use Google’s existing map widget.
Having a store locator map widget on your location landing pages will make it easy for everyone to find their nearest store. However, make sure to use a dynamic, interactive map. Don’t just embed an image of a map that only shows one location. You have to account for the fact that some of your visitors will be looking for locations far from the landing page they find. This will be mostly due to using a VPN. Using a VPN can alter search results by telling a web browser the user is located somewhere they aren’t. Also, some people will just want to find additional locations for when they travel or visit friends.
Pro tip: to optimize the accuracy of using a map widget, enter your exact latitude and longitude in your Google My Business account for each of your locations.
8. Make your location landing pages personal
Your visitors want to know your business is being run by a human being. Take a picture of your staff at each location and post those images on the appropriate location landing page. Show your visitors your business is run by real humans who care about customers.
You may even want to take the opportunity to create a company Instagram account and feed the posts into your location page. You’ll get more calls when you show people what you do and bring your business to life.
9. Add social proof to your location landing pages
Adding social proof to your website will speak volumes about your business without taking up much space. If you already have a customer review system connected to your products, you can definitely display some of those reviews. However, visitors are naturally skeptical of native review systems, especially when all of the reviews appear to be five stars.
To give your visitors the impression that you are objective and transparent, show social proof with third-party systems like Trustpilot and Yelp. Although, while Yelp reviews are good, Trustpilot is better. Do you have a Trustpilot account? If not, you need one immediately.
Trustpilot is the ultimate social proof tool
Trustpilot is a business review platform similar to Yelp, but it’s taken more seriously and is better organized. For example, you can ask customers to rate you in an email and you can embed your Trustpilot reviews on your website with a snippet of code.
Fake reviews are a big problem online. However, with Trustpilot, business owners can’t delete reviews or create fake reviews without being discovered.
10. Answer frequently asked questions on your location landing pages
Answering burning questions is another great way to get your location landing pages to rank. If people in your area are searching for those questions, your pages will have a better chance of turning up in the search results.
People love getting answers to their questions, so the more detailed you can get, the better.
11. Use PPC ads to target local landing pages
Getting your location landing pages to rank in the search engines is the first step. Over time, your landing pages will gain more traction in the SERPs, but it’s also smart to use pay-per-click (PPC) ads to send traffic directly to your landing pages.
PPC ads are effective and affordable. With most platforms, you can set your budget without having to worry about spending more than expected.
We want to help you enhance your SEO strategy with local landing pages
Local landing pages are just for giant corporations. It doesn’t matter whether you have one, two, ten, or five thousand locations – you’ll benefit from having location landing pages.
To start reaping the benefits of local search, contact us today for a free consultation.
We can help you with all your SEO and local search needs as well as assess why your landing page is not working.
When you work with SEO.co, we’ll create and optimize your location landing pages, write professional copy that converts, and manage your PPC ad campaigns. Contact us today to find out more about how our SEO company can help you maximize the rewards of local search.
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