The Hidden Benefits of Having a Location Landing Page
July 17th 2020 | By Steve Grant
When it comes to local online visibility, one of the best SEO tips 2020 has presented us with has to be the location landing page. Let’s take a look at the hidden benefits of having a local landing page to support your Google local SEO strategy, and best practice tips on how to create one.
What is Google local SEO?
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: if you run a local business, then you’re going to need a Google local SEO strategy. What is Google local SEO? It’s a strategy that’s crucial if you run your business from a physical location or have a locally based audience. Its aim? To support you in your quest to make your services and products highly visible to people who are nearby. People with an immediate need for what you do or sell. Local SEO boosts your local presence; increases enquiries, and ups footfall at your physical location.
What is a location landing page?
How do the consumers of today find the best places to buy what they need? To eat? To have fun? To improve their well-being? They pick up their mobile phones or ask their voice assistants for ‘near me’ recommendations.
So, to make it into those all-important recommendations, your location needs to be visible across all the platforms your customers are most likely to use. The best way to do that? Create a location landing page.
A local landing page, also known as a geo-targeted page, is a website page that’s optimised for a particular area.
Whether you have one location or a hundred, local landing pages will help you show up for searches in your specific geographical area. They inform the search engines you operate in a certain location, and have authority there. Consider them a digital signpost for each location in which your business operates.
Today’s consumers pick up their mobile phones or ask their voice assistants for ‘near me’ recommendations whenever they need a local business.
What are the benefits of location landing pages?
Google goes all out to serve local consumers with their search needs because they tend to be the most motivated in their intentions. Whether the search was carried out on desktop or mobile, local consumers usually purchase at a higher rate. According to Act-On, “18 per cent of local smartphone searches led to a purchase within a day, compared to 7 per cent of non-local searches.”
The core reason for creating a location landing page is to help potential customers find you at their closest location.
With a unique landing page on your website that covers each location you serve, you are telling Google that you have authority in that area.
Local landing pages help generate qualified leads. The very things that lead to higher conversion rates, which means you get more sales.
What should my location landing page include?
Look at SEO tips 2020 and you’ll see that there are certain elements a successful local landing page will include to promote visibility.
Geographic keyword optimised content – when optimising for local SEO, the keywords you are targeting should always be accompanied by the location. For example, here at Figment we might use the likes of, ‘web design company London’. It’s not just the landing page content that needs to include your geo-targeted keywords. You’ll also need to include them in the title tag, the headings, the landing page URL and the image ALT text. Always be sure to make the content relevant, semantically enriched and natural for your target keywords.
Social proof – people are more likely to make a purchase if they can see that others have been satisfied with the product or service. This means proving that your brand has a track record of success, and is respected. How to do this? One idea is to feed in your best reviews. Another is to display the logos of your loyal customers. The bigger the brand names here, the better. Lastly, if you’ve won awards, or you are an accredited business within your industry sector, be sure to include those details and official logos too. It all adds up to added reassurance for customers.
Interactive location map – an interactive map will make it easy for people to see precisely where you are and get directions to your location.
An interactive map on your local landing page will make it easy for people to see precisely where you are and get directions to your location.
Contact information – make it easy for visitors to see how and when they can get in touch with you. Make sure your NAP (name, address and phone number) are consistent across your local landing page and all your other local listings such as Google My Business and Facebook Local. This is crucial when it comes to ranking in the Google Local Pack. Don’t stop at your basic NAP. Add opening hours, email, accepted payment methods and whatever else could be of use to potential local customers. Try to use a local phone number rather than an 0800 one as Google will connect this with the location. This is another of the excellent SEO tips 2020 has brought us.
Local SEO landing page bonus tip…
Each of your local landing pages should target one single location. Each of those locations should have its own URL. Adding the pages to your website navigation is a good idea. A great place if you only have a couple of locations is your website footer area, or add a ‘locations’ page to your main navigation and have them all listed there if there are quite a number of them.
Extra bonus tip…
All the leading social platforms have pages that represent local businesses. Facebook Local Pages and Google My Business are the most common examples that people turn to more often than not to learn about a local business. Claim those listings, link to them from your location landing page and you’ll instantly build authority. This will boost your chances of appearing at the top of the search results.
Why a location landing page is one of the best SEO tips 2020 has given us, and how to find help in creating winning geo-targeted pages that take your business to the next level.
Here at Figment we have been helping local businesses enhance their online visibility for many years, and with great success. Offering all the combined benefits of an SEO specialist and web design company, London businesses know they can rely on our expertise when it comes to getting them into the top search engine spots, boosting footfall at physical locations and ultimately increasing sales.
Looking for help with your Google local SEO campaign? Talk to Figment.