8 Ways to Optimize Your Local Landing Pages for SEO

Is your local business visible when people search online for goods or services “near me?” It should be.

Today’s audiences value shopping in their local neighborhoods and visiting “local” businesses when traveling. If they can’t find you with a quick Google search “near me”, they aren’t going to seek you out.

Creating local SEO-optimized landing pages (A) helps your neighbors and guests find your business, and (B) convinces them to go there.

What are Local Landing Pages?

Local landing pages are based on a business’s physical location. This is usually the city and state, but multi-branch organizations may have a separate page for each street address. A retail chain is one example. Search “Anthropologie Washington DC” and you’ll get a list of its locations within the city. Click on the location of your choice and you’ll be taken to the landing page for that branch.

Local landing pages are a good strategy to start driving organic traffic to your site. Local landing pages rank quickly, depending on how many competing businesses are in your region and how large your geolocation is.

Additionally, a local landing page can receive click-through s from your online ads, marketing emails, social media pages, and any other inbound links on websites, blogs, QR codes, or social media.

Local SEO Optimization of Your Landing Pages

Your landing pages must have the specific elements that Google and other search engines look for. Paying attention to the details will help you avoid being invisible to the web crawlers.

1. Include your location in SEO-critical places. This includes the landing page title, URL, meta tags, and descriptions. It is especially critical that local landing pages have their own discoverable URL. It the URL is only available through a search or branch find within your site, Google can’t see it and won’t display it.
2. In the main keyword(s) in the page title and/or meta data. What words will searchers use to find your products or services? Place those words strategically alongside your business name and location.
3. Check for consistency. Is your address listed EXACTLY the same way everywhere, down to the last dot and space? For example, if you use S. E. 10th St. on your Google Business Profile page but you use South East 10 Street on your Facebook page, and Southeast 10th Street in your HTML coding, you won’t get ranked. Check other elements like phone number, keywords and the Google Business Profiles page categories.
4. Test all of your inbound links. From Twitter to industry forum citations, a link that claims to take users to your local landing page had better really do that. If, instead, you take them to the main website homepage, Google will take note. And your rankings will take a plunge.
5. Populate the entire site with location information. Every page on your website should have a link to the location pages. This makes finding you easier for both the search engine and the people who want to do business with you.
6. Review your entire site for SEO quality. Does the site load quickly? Does it have responsive display for mobile devices? Is it easy to navigate? Is the content relevant and unique? Are the keywords consistent throughout? Do you know of any Google penalties in effect? For example, using black hat links.
7. Avoid the temptation to over-optimize. You might consider creating a separate landing page for every neighborhood you serve thereby gaining the entire search results page. Google’s Doorway Page algorithm will prevent this by looking for certain behaviors. A large number of domain names, funneling users to only one page, or pages that are “substantially similar” and outside of the “browsable hierarchy” are all red flags.
8. Provide good landing page content. As with every other page that Google crawls, relevancy and uniqueness are the major determining factors in local SEO ranking. This is where good marketing technique is critical.

What Should Be on Local Landing Pages?

Your landing page tells customers everything they need to know to find and visit your local business. A quality-crafted landing page will be rewarded by the search engines with higher placement in their results Your local landing page should include these five elements:

1. Provide local information. Your street address, phone number, and hours of operation are the obvious elements that must be there. A street map and “get directions” function are pretty standard now, too. Depending on the nature of your local business, you might include the email address of your sales or customer service team, too.
2. Highlight the features and benefits of your business. Who are you? What did you do? Why are you better than the competition? Share your brand’s Unique Selling Proposition. Start with a strong, benefit-oriented headline and you’ll be ahead of 90% of the landing pages today.
3. Feature special offers. Local SEO landing pages are the ideal place to advertise an offer that’s only available at a specific location. For example, a restaurant chain might feature different pricing at each branch. Of course, this is also incentive for people to take the next step.
4. Display your credentials. Show that you are trustworthy and competent by displaying your official accreditations (i.e. Better Business Bureau), licenses, awards, customer testimonials, and links to online reviews (i.e. Yelp).
5. Give them a call to action. Help them take the next step. Ask them to click to your website homepage or contact page; call you; email you; or visit you in person. If your landing page is long enough to require scrolling, then make sure there’s at least one call to action visible at all times. Put the biggest one at the very bottom so it’s the last thing they see.

A successful local SEO optimized landing page brings together SEO and marketing strategy so that each supports the other for maximum results. Our digital marketing and SEO professionals can help you reap the benefits of a local landing page.