[Build Backlinks Online] Local Landing Pages: A Guide To Great Implementation In Every Situation

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Local Landing Pages: A Guide To
Great Implementation In Every Situation'

Posted by MiriamEllis
Do you keep seeing terms like "city landing pages" and "service area pages"
mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of
marketing is a good match for your business? The topic of local landing pages
has been super-active in the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post
to honor all of these great questions we're getting. This guide defines
different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business
models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet
searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject
of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of
pages for your unique business.
Single-location service area business
This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30
mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide
in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck
yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve
customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the
definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a
dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your
customers to come to you.
To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term
"city landing page" first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and
this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of
Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product,
it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and
it remains so to this day.
Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results
for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this
leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that
they serve in a variety of locations. The answer is to pursue organic rankings,
rather than local ones, for these other service cities. Developing landing pages
on the company website is one of the key techniques for achieving this desired
visibility.
How it works:Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of
location.
Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these cities.
Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading such as
"Cities We Serve."
If possible, earn social mentions and links for these pages.FAQ:
Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each
one?
A: Without a unique page for each city, you're unlikely to rank organically
for relevant queries. That being said, it's not typically reasonable to create
50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start by identifying your very most
important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop well-planned, high-quality
pages for each of them. You can then continue to build out new pages over time,
or, consider the idea of developing an on-site blog to begin publishing ongoing
content about your less-important service cities as well as your important ones.
Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on 20 different
pages. Is this okay?
A: No! You're putting your website at risk for a duplicate content penalty.
The absolute rule of developing local landing pages is that the content is
unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to write about, don't
create the page.
Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for that?
A: You could take that approach, if keyword research indicates that people
search for what you offer by state. Typically, though, users either search for a
service + a city, and even if they don't, Google will localize searchers'
results based on the location of their device. Hence, if you want to show up for
"fence builders in Denver," you've got to have a page on your site that speaks
to this need. If your website is simply optimized for "Colorado," it isn't
locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider you as a relevant
answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like Denver, Boulder, or
Colorado Springs.
Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service cities and earn
rankings this way?
A: Only if you have real, physical offices there. You are only eligible to
build one Google+ Local page per physical location (with the exception of
multi-partner practices and large campuses like hospitals). It's forbidden to
build them for any city where you aren't physically located.
Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my service cities?
A: No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and virtual offices. Unless
you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is answering the telephone
during stated business hours, you should not be using such addresses to appear
like you're physically located in your service cities. This is not only against
Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers. If you can get a real
office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do this.
Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my homepage?
A: This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a few locations, it's perfectly
fine to mention these in a natural manner on your homepage, but you shouldn't
count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your business unless you have no
competition. It's much better to build a page for each city. Something you
should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of text anywhere on your
website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as
a spammy practice.
Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for each of my city
landing pages?
A: This is where your creativity counts most! Consider the following options
for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific content:Showcase completed
projects in each city, using text and photos.
Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema
review markup.
Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them to your
customers.
Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a transcript.
Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to city.
Consider creating infographics specific to each city.
Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are
important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.
Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.
Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and
promotions.
Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you
participate in or organizations you sponsor.
Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that nobody else
has thought of doing!
Single location brick-and-mortar business
This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical
location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city
in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to
be a good fit.
That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model
that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in
a small town near larger cities.FAQ:
Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to rank for these
other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of these places
from which clients come to me?
A: It's understandable that if your business is located just outside of
Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you from these cities for
services, you might want to achieve high rankings there. To my mind, this comes
down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it be relevant or useful
to create pages on your website stating, "Customer Joe comes to us from Dallas?"
Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really help anybody, and if
this is your only connection to a neighboring community, you probably shouldn't
attempt to create local landing pages.
However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or
cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate
connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical
scenarios:A physician with privileges at a major city hospital
A therapist who speaks at major city conferences
An attorney who serves at courts in other cities
A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other cities
An organization that hosts events in other cities
You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a
neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing
about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which
you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some
visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends
on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill
in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could
yield exciting results.
Multi-location brick-and-mortar or service area business
In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff
travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In
both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address.
Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during
stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each
office, too.FAQ:
Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple locations?
A: There are nuances to this situation which I'll do my best to address here.
Your scenario might consist of being a local restaurant chain with five branches
in a state or a multi-state franchise with 100 or more locations. If you've got
a main headquarters and a just a handful of additional locations, you might
consider optimizing the homepage and about page for the headquarters and putting
the complete NAP of all locations in the footer and on the contact page of the
site, in addition to building a local landing page for each office, optimized
with its unique NAP in the opening copy.
If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP
of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique
NAP on each respective local landing page.
If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the
footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing
pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages
in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or
similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.
Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid
duplicate content penalties.
Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these local landing pages
unique. What can I write about?
A: Consider the following ideas for inspiration:Showcase your work in each
city, writing up great project descriptions.
If different services, products or classes are available at different locations,
describe these.
Create city-specific coupons and contests.
Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of their
content.
Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given community.
Offer excellent driving directions.
Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if possible.
Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.
Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve their own radius.
What kinds of landing pages should I be building?
A: You'll build a unique landing page for each office, optimized with its
unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local page for each office to its
respective page on the website. Additionally, you can then set about building up
a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for each of the cities in the service
radius of each office. If this ends up looking like way too many pages, consider
blogging to begin covering these service cities over time with descriptions of
your completed products.
National company desiring a local presence
For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for
important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a
blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now
being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder
if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back
visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in
this scenario:
1. If you have staffed, physical locations in some cities and make in-person
contact with your customers, then you are eligible to create a local landing
page and attached Google+ Local page for each physical office. You can take
advantage of the techniques described above in this article. For cities you
serve but where you're not physically located, you should determine whether it
is reasonable to create unique content for each city, or if your customers'
needs will be better served by something like an interactive map.
2. If you have no physical offices or in-person contact with customers, your
business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages, and the development of
on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For example, if you're a
virtual services provider supporting all of the US, creating a page for every
single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable approach to marketing.
After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody, nationwide, what can you
find to write about that would be different from page to page across thousands
of pages?
In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your
services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to
rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you
will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media
to create a presence in important communities.
For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to
'get' brands and if someone is searching for "Whole Foods Market" or
"McDonalds," Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results
for the searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect.
Fair or not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller
your company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO
practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target
communities.In conclusion
"Does it make sense?" is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for
the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful
pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to
find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are,
they're not a good fit.
Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can
create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so,
please share your ideas with the community!Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a
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