Search Engine Optimization

Local Landing Pages: A Comprehensive Strategy for Local SEO

June 7, 2023
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Search Engine Optimization

If people in different areas require location-specific information about your business, you need to create and optimize local landing pages — also known as location pages! A local landing page lets potential customers in a specific geographical region learn about your products and services. That can be great for local SEO, helping you drive more people from search engines to your website. Below, learn about the benefits and different types of location pages and how to create content for local landing pages for SEO!

4 Types of Local Landing Pages

 There are four main types of location pages: 1. Location detail pages, which include information about a specific physical business location 2. Location service/department pages, which include information about a particular service or department at a physical business location 3. City pages, which include information about multiple physical business locations in a city 4. State pages, which include information about multiple physical business locations in a state For example, let's consider a business with 12 branches in Texas — four in Houston and four in Austin. This business can include a state page with information about all its branches and two different city pages. Additionally, it can create location detail pages for each of its 12 locations.

5 Benefits of Creating Local Landing Pages

 Here are some of the advantages of creating a local landing page for different areas:

  1. Improved SEO (see below)
  2. Providing customers in a geographical area with location-specific content
  3. Generating local leads
  4. Increased brand awareness
  5. Increased sales and service sign-ups

Why Location Pages Matter for SEO

A local landing page can improve SEO in the following ways:

1. Importance of location pages for branded queries

 Location pages optimize branded queries (when customers search for your brand directly in a search engine), helping people find information about your business that's relevant to their location.

2. Attracting non-branded local queries and potential customers

 Location pages also optimize non-branded queries (when customers don't search for your brand directly in a search engine). People might come across your business when searching for similar products and services to yours in their area because a location page satisfies their search intent.

3. The impact of external links and local citations on location pages

 Search engines love websites that include external links and local citations (mentions of your business contact information), so including these elements on a local landing page can improve SEO.

Local Landing Page and Local Map Pack Rankings

Creating location pages also helps your business show up on Google's Local Map Pack, which displays the three most relevant local search results based on a user's search query. To further increase your chances of appearing on Local Map Pack, try creating different Google Business Profiles (GBPs) for each of your locations and link them to their corresponding location pages. That can help you rank for queries from search engine users in different service areas. You can test whether this method works by performing a simple A/B test. First, link a local GBP to your home page and see if you show on Local Map Rank. Then swap out that link for the correct local landing page for that area. You should have a higher chance of appearing on Local Map Rank when you link GBPs to location pages.

Essential Elements of a Well-Optimized Local Landing Page

Well-optimized local SEO landing pages will also help you rank highly on search results. Here are some tips for better location pages:1. Structure data with LocalBusiness schema and Breadcrumb schema — markup code you can add to your website to increase searchability 2. Include targeted metadata like H1s and title tags to location pages to enhance their relevancy 3. Consider other factors that will engage your audience, such as images, videos, and a map of your business location 

Advanced Strategies for Local SEO

Here are some more advanced strategies you can incorporate into your local SEO landing pages to improve your search rankings:1. Optimize page copy for improved SEO performance 2. Increase the chances of appearing on Google Maps' Points of Interest (POIs) feature by integrating targeted phrases into your local SEO city landing pages 3. Link to nearby locations for better search engine crawlability and relevancy 4. Utilize topically relevant images and videos, such as photos of your specific business location 5. Link to internal product/service category pages 6. Incorporate local reviews, employee profiles, and testimonials from local customers 7. Showcase community connections and local sponsorships 8. Using Google Merchant Center data to boost conversions 

Best Practices for Local Landing Pages

Follow these best practices when creating location pages to increase SEO:

Avoid unnecessary service pages for organic traffic

Multiple service pages for the same location will end up competing with each other for a high position on search engine results pages. Keep things simple by having a single page for each of your locations and a set of service pages for your entire company.

Address potential multilocation SEO challenges

Having multiple business branches in a city or even a neighborhood can confuse search engines and make it hard for people to find a specific location. You might want to differentiate locations close to one another by referring to them by street name. For example, "Building Supplies, Springfield, 6th Street" and "Building Supplies, Springfield, 9th Street"

Strategies for managing large-scale location pages

Creating and updating lots of location-based landing pages requires time and effort, especially if you regularly optimize these pages for SEO. Content templates in website creation platforms like WordPress can make it easier to manage location pages. Alternatively, you can outsource SEO and content management to a digital marketing agency.

What You Should Know about Location Pages and SEO

Creating a local landing page for different areas boosts SEO by optimizing branded and non-branded search queries and increasing your chances of appearing on Google's Local Map Pack. Creating and fine-tuning location-based landing pages will provide people in a specific geographical region with relevant information, helping you improve brand awareness, lead generation, sales, and sign-ups.