Why You Should Be Building Location Pages
Are you a business with multiple physical locations? Do you want to increase online traffic and convert more leads? A location page is exactly what you need.
Marketing today has completely evolved over the years, making digital marketing a vital part of any campaign. Not only marketing, but business itself has changed and requires companies to get creative when reaching out to customers. One way to do this is by creating local SEO landing pages.
Reach Leads with a Geo-targeting Website
Perhaps one of the biggest struggles of a company is finding and attracting their target market. When you have more than one location, most people choose to visit the location closest to them. By building out local SEO landing pages catered to each specific location you serve, you increase the probability of someone in that area finding your business.
Building location pages takes work and effort. If you built a top-notch landing page when you were a single location business, you’ll need to multiply that effort to satisfy the unique options available for each of your locations. And if you have duplicate content on your website, it’s time to optimize those landing pages and build something that will bring in results.
So what is a local SEO landing page? How can you build and optimize each one you make? We’ve got the answers.
What is a Location Page?
A local landing page (or location page) is typically built for websites or companies that service multiple geographic locations. These unique landing pages give potential customers a better opportunity to find a store location in their area.
Think about a local real estate company, for example. While they may be located in one state, they likely serve many different counties or cities. In order to improve their chances of showing up in a SERP for a specific area, they would need to create geo-targeted content for each individual city and area.
Let’s look at Uber for example. If I’m looking for an Uber in Salt Lake City, this page is going to be my top organic result. You can see they’ve created a specific geo page detailing their services in the Salt Lake area and they’ve done the same for every other location that they service.
With just one landing page, you can’t rank for several location-specific keywords at a time. You need to focus your marketing strategy and branch out with landing pages that have specific keywords for that location. These keywords are particularly important for brand exposure and getting more leads in all of your locations.
Now that you see the need for a location page, it’s time to get started.
Structuring and Creating Geo Location Pages for Your Site
By building unique local SEO landing pages, you can better support a variety of on-page elements, such as individualized content, localized URLs, page titles and optimized H1s. Before long, your content can rank in the top ten for each local keyword you are optimizing for.
However, geo-targeted content is not just changing the state or city between the pages. You have to create unique pages to provide a more focused and targeted user experience and avoid duplicate content penalties. This requires a team of dedicated writers who research, write and optimize for a specific town or city.
Also, because each geographical market may cater to a diverse demographic, it’s essential to streamline your individualized online marketing efforts, particularly when you’re operating multiple locations. Here are some actionable tips to help maximize search visibility for each market you serve.
Create a Geo Page For Each Location
Get the most for each location you cater to. Each local SEO landing page should be location-specific, including the URL, business hours, address, phone and email. Make each page the most reliable and trusted source of information for that location. Not only with this benefit potential customers the most, but it will improve your brand image and expertise in the industry.
Structure Your Location Page Information
Sometimes, leads won’t automatically find your location page. Create a landing page for locations as a high-level menu to offer search engines and users. It should provide easy-to-navigate location information that links to specific location pages. Once they find the link, they can go to the local page that has the information they need.
Share Unique Content and Data for Each Page
Location pages should be gems of local information. Build out these pages with content distinct to each site. Include details such as:
- The physical location, including nearby cities, neighborhoods, landmarks and directions
- Available parking
- Interior, exterior, and other photos
- Contact information
- Staff recommendations, tips and favorites
The more beneficial knowledge you present, the more comfortable potential clients will feel with your services.
It’s About the Finish, Not the Start
A top website goal is getting visitors to your location pages, so focus on that aim instead of where visitors start. Including locations in the navigation and main content areas of the site may feel redundant, but it offers as many paths as possible to the final destination.
Capture Leads
Now that your potential customer has found your local SEO landing page, don’t forget to provide a way to capture that lead. Although your information may help them, provide a call to action that can help them act on what they have learned. A submission form or contact us section should always be found on your location pages.
Optimize and Use Keywords
Remember, this local SEO landing page is in place to help you capture searchers that are looking specifically for your products or services within their area. Don’t forget to include those location names as part of your keywords and be mindful to use long-tail keywords which can be easier to rank for highly in the SERPs.
Don’t forget to utilize other parts of your website such as your footer, sidebar, home page, drop-down menus, and main navigation. This makes arriving on the right location page a simple process.
Tips for Reaching Your Target Audience
Geography is an influential component of creating targeted and customized location pages. The effectiveness of geo-targeting will only develop further as mobile use expands and location data becomes more reliable and accessible.
In fact, the Local Search Association discovered that mobile devices surpassed PC use in local business and service searches. Here are some practical tips for using location-based landing pages to reach your target audience:
1. Know What’s Around
Each city has something that makes it unique. There are many location-specific events or festivals that attract people who could potentially be your future clients. Mention these events or collaborate with their directors to expand your reach. You can also boost sales by providing services needed during these events on your location pages and in your stores.
2. Learn About Your Target Audience
To effectively reach out to your target audience, you need to know who they are. Who are you trying to get the attention of? Look at age groups, interests and other demographics. With those things in mind, you have a better chance of finding the groups you want to target.
3. Use Location-Specific Keywords
This is one of the best ways to get recognized by your target audience. Use the benefits of SEO and start whipping out content that is location-specific and keyword-oriented.
4. Be Smart About Location
If you have a specific target audience, be sure to only advertise where they will be. Along with location pages, your marketing campaign should be particular and directed towards those who will be interested.
Consumers react better to relevant marketing, resulting in increasing the ROI of targeted campaigns such as those found on geo-location pages. Mobile consumers make geography one of the simplest methods to target, and innovative technology makes doing so a real help to those who use it.
Scaling Lots of Location Pages
For larger corporations, scaling hundreds (or thousands) of location pages can seem like a daunting task. When tackling a large project like this, working in phases can help to get value quickly while cutting down costs.
Phase One
Initially, focus on creating main location pages for the largest market in each location. You can use analytics and past data to see which products are being sold most in each location. Make this page unique, specialized for each community and talk about specific landmarks and popular locations in that area to give context. Use the tips above to refine your geo-targeted pages.
Phase Two
For this phase, work on building out location pages for the smaller areas in those markets. Use your large market page as a template and then replace the geo-specific commentary with something specific to that city and rewrite the main messaging so it stays original – but no need to change the overall messaging or information. Doing this can speed up the time frame of getting the pages done as well as reduce the writing costs since you’re using a template to structure the data.
Approaching large-scale city landing page SEP in this way can help you to capitalize on large markets first but also cost-effectively allow you to build out the rest of the locations that need pages as well.
Benefits of Location Pages
Adding geo-targeted landing pages to your website is an ideal method for generating leads, links and local traffic. They direct potential clients to your business in their location and gives them valuable contact information and research about the area.
Not only does it benefit your local clients, but it helps you gain Google authority. With carefully optimized keywords and content, you show Google the importance of your location page and rank higher for local searches.
Final Targeted Landing Page Tips
If you’re looking for more ways to improve your location pages, consider these last four tips:
- Add a map
- Write about the staff
- Display reviews and social mentions
- Offer local menus, store information and coupons
The more you personalize the page, the more useful it is to search engines and local leads. And by using an individualized strategy with each page, you can understand how locations are performing independently. As you continue to develop these pages, you can identify goals, traffic and ranking issues.
Building Location Pages
If you haven’t ventured into developing location pages on your site, now is the perfect time to give it a chance. Sometimes it takes a little creativity, but it is worth the effort, particularly for local businesses with multiple locations. The online benefits far outweigh the time and effort it takes to create them.
Need some help whipping out your local SEO landing pages? Our writing team can help.
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