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A location based page is a web page that is optimized to rank in a specific neighborhood, town, city, state, or region. It typically includes information about the business and the services provided in that city, as well as other basic information about the area such as its history and culture.
Location based pages are effective in SEO because it allows a business to tailor a page to a single area, making it very clear to Google where you expect to rank. You are probably familiar with location specific pages if you have used Google to search for local professionals. Landing on a page that mentions the town or city you are searching from gives the user an added sense of trust, as your message better matches their search intent.
The number one ranking factor is location. If your business is physically located near the searcher, you are very likely to come up at the top of the page. If you don’t have a physical location in an area you want to rank, the best way to attract these customers is to create a page that explains all of your services within the context of that city. Below are a few specifics with regard to how these pages relate to SEO.
By providing high-quality, informative content about work done in that city, businesses can establish themselves as authorities in the local area.
Visitors are more likely to stay on a page if they feel the message is tailored to them. Landing on a page that mentions your exact location will increase engagement with the page overall.
Optimizing a location based page can be a cost-effective way for businesses to market themselves to local customers, compared to traditional forms of advertising like paid Google Ads.
This healthcare services company has an effective city page for the city of Boston. The page provides detailed information about the company's services in the Boston area, including doctors, dentists, and specialists. The page is optimized for keywords related to healthcare services in Boston and features a user-friendly layout that makes it easy to find information and book appointments.
This lighting company has an effective location based page for the city of High Point, North Carolina. The page provides detailed information about the company's lighting showrooms in and around the High Point area, including product descriptions, prices, and customer reviews. The page is optimized for keywords related to lighting showrooms in High Point and features a user-friendly layout that makes it easy to find information and purchase products.
Odds are that the search terms your customers are using to find businesses like yours do not change from city to city, especially if you are trying to grow to different areas within the same state. If you are trying to rank for cities outside of your state, there may be a slight variation.
Location based pages are primary landing pages so you will want to focus on your short-tail keyword goals here instead of longer tail search terms that you can focus on with blogging or video content.
If you have a short list of keywords you want to rank your site for, these are usually directly translated to your location based pages, meaning this page should have similar content as the rest of the website.
If you properly link to these location based pages to and from the rest of your site, Google will handle all of the heavy lifting and figure out that a page dedicated to a location is better served than your home page to a customer outside of your direct vicinity. Over time you will notice these pages appearing above your home page in these areas.
A good location based page takes all of the elements of your main website and places them on one page. At Mad Mango, we like to build location based pages with the following structure.
To ensure that a location based page is well-optimized for search engines, businesses should pay close attention to certain essential elements. It is preferable to have the location’s name in your title tag, URL structure, header tags, meta description, and throughout your content in a natural manner.
Don’t forget to mark up your page with local schema!
You will need to link to these location based pages from somewhere on your website in order to avoide an orphan page situation. Interlinking is a high priority in Google’s estimation of a page’s value on your website. Search engines assume that a page you frequently link to is more important than pages you don’t. In this case, if you can link to these pages in your header or footer, you will be adding a link to each location based page from every page on your website.
Some other common locations for this interlinking are:
Depending on the competitive nature of your business and area, simply creating a location based page may not be enough for you to rank in a particular area. Below you will find a few content ideas that you can use in your blog section to show Google that you are dedicated to ranking in a particular area. Link these blogs to your location based pages using the short tail keywords you want to rank for in a natural manner.
(Bonus points if you link to these posts from the bottom of your location page. This will create a click path for Google’s crawlers showing them more content related to that city.)
Again, depending on the competitive nature of your business and area, simply creating a location based page may not be enough for you to rank in a particular area. You may also need an outside link or two directly to your location page to signal to Google that other businesses in this area trust you. Below you can find a few ideas on how to build local links to your new location based pages.
In conclusion, creating a well-optimized location based page is essential for businesses that want to attract local customers and get more traffic from a specific geographical area. By conducting thorough research and analysis, optimizing essential elements of the page, creating high-quality content that is optimized for search engines, and building a link or two, businesses can establish themselves as trusted authorities in any location and attract more customers.
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