Local Landing Pages and how to Get High Google Rankings

This guide will give you an insight on local landing pages and how you can implement it for your business. It begins with the definition of different types of local landing pages and various unique business models on how they can rank top on the local internet searches. It is critical to appear and rank favorably in the local searches because more and more people do their search with words like near me’ and the trends are likely to increase even more. Over the past few years, there has been an exponential increase in these types of searches according to recent Google report. Other reports indicate that more the 90% of consumers use the internet to search for local business, and these figures could even increase in the future. With the exponential growth of internet enabled smart phones, there is every reason for all businesses to increase their local visibility regardless of the company size.

Single-location Service area Business

This is a business model in the service industry offering services in a limited location. In this type of business, you move to different places to offer your services, for instance, a plumber or a tow truck operator or a plumber who do fixing in residential areas. In this scenario, you move to the clients to offer your services rather than the customers coming to you. This type of business model forms the basis of local SEO or the local landing pages. This unique type of marketing has evolved over time in contrast to the Google search that leans more towards physical locations. Since its inception, Google local product search was not suitable for the Single–location Service area business or (SAB), and it has not changed to this day. In this regard, most SAB cannot obtain good rankings in local Google search results in other cities or locality other than where they are physically located. For businesses operating in different locations, there is a need to pursue a unique or organic ranking that is distinct from the local ones, and this requires developing landing pages of the company’s website to achieve the much-needed visibility.

Best Approach

  • Identify major locations that you server, for instance, the cities you serve including the cities away from your physical location where you offer your services.
  • In your website, you need to create a unique page for each of the cities or locations you serve.
  • All the pages should be linked together from the top level menu, with an indicative caption heading like the “Locations We Serve.”
  • There should be a social mention and linking of all the pages.

In a situation where you serve numerous cities, it may not be reasonable to create several pages for each city. However, you may start with few perhaps five or more of the most important localities or cities you serve and increase them gradually over time. It is worth noting that when developing local landing pages each page needs to have unique content. You run the risk of penalty for content duplication if you attempt to create similar pages for each city. Never create a page if you do not have a unique content is the rule of the thump.

Single Location fixed business

In such a business model it exists in one single physical location, for example, a restaurant or a retail shop. A local landing page may not be appropriate for this type of business model because the whole website would only be optimized within the city it is located. Perhaps the one that needs to be addressed is one in a small town and close to one or more bigger cities. If for instance, your business is located near Washington DC and clients come from the city for your services then there is need to rank highly within the city. It is paramount to identify how your business is linked to the neighboring city or cities and their relevance to your site. An example you could be a doctor with some privileges to a major hospital in the city or an attorney who serves several courts within the city. Under this scenario and other similar cases, there is the need to generate content that will rank highly within the city. I will not make sense to rank highly in a city you are not serving.

Multi-Location fixed or service area business

Most people now rely heavily on internet searches to find products and different service providers, but the internet environment setup has made it hard for multi-location businesses to rank favorably. Despite the difficulty, there is way out as long as local SEO principles are strictly followed. Once these principles are put in place, you would enjoy greater visibility among the local users and even enjoy a reputation locally in areas you operate.

In this business model, you could be having an office in a certain location where your staff moves to offer services to clients, or the customers would be coming to your location for business. In this case, it is paramount to have a landing page for every physical address given. In each location, there has to be a unique phone number and the staff need to be present during the hours indicated. In such a case you can have a Google plus local landing page for each office.

If your business involves a number of branches within the state, then you might want to optimize the headquarters homepage and putting NAP of all the locations at the footer of the contact page. Additionally, you could also create a local landing page for every office. On the other hand, if the branches are few, and they are all of equal value, then it is advisable to optimize the homepage, service description page for different brands and about page. Putting NAP of all locations in the contact page and the footer is desirable. NAP for each local landing page should be unique as well. In a nutshell, all contents of each page must be unique to avert penalty for duplicating content.