When attempting to connect with local audiences, you can’t depend on broadly targeted content. You need to optimize content for locally targeted search terms and speak more directly to local audiences to carry prospects along the customer journey, which is where local landing pages can help.
In this blog post, Tyler Phillips, Marketing Manager, will go into creating location-specific landing pages and how to use location-based targeting to build a relationship with your target audiences, whether you’re a local brick-and-mortar business looking to attract foot traffic or a service-based business targeting multiple service areas.
My Expert Opinion on Creating Location-Specific Landing Pages
As the latest statistics show, more and more people are searching for local businesses online. For example, search queries with the words “near me” and “close by” have increased by a staggering 900% within a two-year period, and 46% of consumers prefer to purchase from companies with a local presence.
These are merely a couple of many stats showing the importance of local optimization for businesses serving specific areas. Not only do you need to develop your local SEO strategy to build a relationship with audiences, but you must also develop individual location landing pages to correspond with your SEO and PPC campaigns when targeting local consumers.
These pages can serve as critical gateways that appeal to target audiences toward the top of the funnel, bringing them down to the bottom with subsequent marketing efforts.
Learn more about what goes into developing local landing pages and how to supercharge this content with the proper structure and optimization.
Why Location-Specific Landing Pages Matter
When trying to reach target audiences toward the beginning of the customer journey, location-based landing pages are essential. More specifically, they can target people with information search intent.
There are four types of search intent that indicate where someone is in the buyer’s journey, with informational intent being at the beginning, followed by the commercial, navigational, and transactional stages. People with this intent want more details about certain topics, potentially looking up information in blog posts or about local products, services, and companies.
Location landing pages can connect with people during this informational phase, when people want to learn more about your business and offerings. By creating location-specific landing pages with good search engine optimization (SEO), you can increase your visibility online via search engine results and advertising, boost conversions by reaching the right people at the right time, and make your business appear more credible as people come to recognize and trust your brand more than less visible competitors.
Understanding User Intent and Use Cases
In most cases, when people land on location pages, they are entering certain “near me” keywords and are either looking for more information about a local offering or business, or they are ready to turn to a local business in the commercial or transactional stage.
Here is a brief breakdown of how you would segment audiences at each stage of the sales funnel:
- Awareness: Here, people would be interested in knowing more about a service and come across initial marketing content for information. Geo-targeted landing pages would be crucial here to connect with prospects who aren’t quite ready to make a purchase.
- Interest: The next audience segment would comprise those who are interested in a potential solution to their problems. Additional marketing materials could detail the benefits of your offerings or services.
- Consideration: People at this stage might be considering different companies and their respective offerings, in which case you could promote your brand as the best solution compared to competitors.
- Decision: Once your target audiences reach this phase, it’s time to incorporate compelling calls to action (CTAs) and convert them into customers.
URL and Technical Structure
One of the main considerations when creating location-specific landing pages is each page’s URL structure.
Depending on the nature of your website, you could choose between parent-child (i.e., tree) or flat URL structures. Generally, when developing location landing pages, a parent-child structure is often better, especially if you have multiple locations across several states or countries.
For example, if you have locations in Dallas and Austin, Texas, you might structure each location page under “example.com/locations/tx/dallas” and “example.com/locations/tx/austin.”
Also, consider the technical structure of the pages themselves, especially when you’re targeting multiple regions with more than one language. Specifically, you will need to add hreflang tags to your location pages to cater each one to different regions and languages.
These tags will automatically connect users in specific regions with a version of the page using their target language, improving the user experience for all users while also preventing issues with duplicate content.
Keyword Research and On-Page Optimization
In optimizing landing pages SEO, you will need to implement on-page optimization techniques that help maximize visibility in search engines.
To start with, you will need to conduct in-depth keyword research for each location. Make sure that each location page targets unique keywords to avoid cannibalization, and prioritize high-intent keywords such as “quote for home renovation services in [city].”
You can use many tools for keyword research that will indicate search volume, competition level, and other metrics. Some tools include Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Semrush.
Once you’ve found the keywords you want to target, carefully and naturally include them within your content, including your page’s title, subheaders, and the body of your content.
Other on-page elements to optimize include:
- Title tags that appear in blue text within search results
- Meta descriptions that show up beneath title tags
- Internal links to other pages
- Images with alt text and captions featuring relevant keywords
Page Structure and Flow
You also need to consider how you structure your pages with location-based targeting, incorporating the following key sections:
- Hero Section: The hero section is a block of text that appears at the top of the page before the body below, usually with a compelling title and a subtitle beneath it. This section will be short and sweet and should include a high-priority keyword or two, especially in the geo-targeted H1 title.
- Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Sections like “Why [Your Company]?” could include a USP that helps you stand apart from local competitors, discussing the benefits that people won’t find when looking for your offerings elsewhere.
- CTAs: In various places throughout your pages, incorporate relevant CTAs that encourage people to take the next course of action, typically with “contact us” buttons or “learn more” types of interactions to move people along the funnel.
- Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP) and Map: Be sure to make it easy for people to find you and reach out, with an accurate NAP and a conveniently embedded map that gives people directions to your location.
- Services: Be sure to list your services, and make them unique to each area if your offerings change depending on location.
- Team: In some cases, you can also include details about your team, including people who work specifically at the designated location, giving your business a more human touch.
- Testimonials: Where appropriate, include testimonials from customers, ideally from the corresponding location you’re targeting. Brief quotes from a testimonials page or embedded Google reviews could convince more people to turn to you.
- Local Content: Speak of locally specific elements, including landmarks and pain points, which will show that you understand the communities you serve.
- FAQs: Some location pages may also include an FAQ section at some point with three or more questions, especially ones that are unique to the corresponding location.
To give you some ideas of how to structure your local landing pages, let’s look at a couple of good examples.
One is Dunkin’, which keeps things simple with an address, CTA buttons requesting directions and to download the dedicated app, business hours, and an embedded map.
Jimmy John’s, meanwhile, uses proximity landing pages to help customers find specific locations in their area, with a bigger focus on its embedded map.
Local Content and Social Proof
When creating location-specific landing pages, try to tailor the content to local landmarks and pain points. For example, you might be able to help people find your location by pointing out its “across the street from” certain nearby businesses or features.
For instance, U.S. Lawns discusses the locations’ specific attributes that make it important for businesses to use its lawn care services.
Also, include staff intros and authentic images throughout, putting a person and a physical location to your business.
And don’t forget to show reviews if you have them, potentially including Google or other reviews within the content.
Mobile Optimization and UX Best Practices
Be sure to optimize your landing pages with mobile SEO and responsiveness, which will entail facilitating fast load speeds, click-to-call options for immediate contact, and thumb-friendly buttons that are easy to tap.
Additionally, think about above-the-fold essentials that grab people’s attention, including a hero section and an immediate call to action to save visitors some time. Your opening paragraph should also be short and to the point to move people along.
U.S. Lawns knows how to develop its above-the-fold content to build an immediate connection.
Here are some additional user experience (UX) do’s and don’ts to guide your efforts.
Do:
- Integrate user-centric designs
- Add intuitive navigation
- Maintain a consistent design across your pages for recognizable branding and uniform structure
- Optimize for short loading times
- Include clear CTAs
- Incorporate a visual hierarchy to improve readability
- Use A/B testing to gauge the performance of different elements
Don’t:
- Overwhelm readers with too much information
- Include complex forms and data inputs
- Intrude with annoying pop-ups
- Overcrowd touch targets or make them too small
- Auto-play videos or other multimedia
- Overlook accessibility requirements
Schema, Structured Data, and Tracking
Another element to think about is schema markup or structured data.
This markup gives search engines more context regarding your pages’ content to help Google bots and other sites crawl, index, and rank your content.
In the case of location-based landing pages, you would use LocalBusiness markup in JSON-LD language to optimize your pages. Doing so could help you show up for highly visible search results like featured snippets, potentially driving more clicks.
To measure the results of your efforts, you also want to consistently track all form submissions and calls with analytics and reports. You can then make any changes as needed based on how well your pages are helping you achieve your business goals.
Citations, Backlinks, and GBP Integration
Be sure to build local citations to further maximize visibility across the web, and get backlinks on other authoritative sites through guest posts and other means, ideally through local publications, influencers, or other people or entities in your target locations.
In building citations and backlinks, synchronize your pages with your company’s Google Business Profiles.
All citations should contain a consistent NAP, which services like BrightLocal can help you maintain for every location if anything changes.
Avoiding Pitfalls and Duplicate Content
There are a couple of potential pitfalls to avoid with your geo-targeted landing pages, including:
- Thin Content: Make sure each page has sufficient content to signal to Google that your page is of value to users. More content will also drive more engagement among visitors, subsequently sending more signals to Google.
- Duplicate Content: If your pages contain duplicate content, this could lead to a penalty. To avoid this, don’t use mass page builders and try to keep each page unique to each location by speaking more directly to local audiences.
- Creating Pages for Unserved Areas: Only create pages for locations you actively serve, or this could lead to confusion and even frustration among people who mistakenly believe they’re in your service area, hurting your brand reputation.
Continuous Optimization and KPI Tracking
Work on continually improving your location-based targeting with consistent optimization.
In doing so, track key performance indicators (KPIs) and specific metrics based on your goals.
Some metrics may include:
- Impressions that gauge the number of times ads linking to your pages appear in front of target audiences
- Click-through rate (CTR), which tracks the rate of people clicking through to your location pages or to other pages from within them
- Conversion rate based on the number of people who complete a desired action after landing on your pages
- Assisted conversions that track the marketing channels that nudge people into conversions
In optimizing your pages, make ongoing updates as necessary, such as event mentions, reviews, or changes to staff.
Continuous A/B testing with new content could also help you figure out what connects most with audiences.
FAQs
1. What should a location-specific landing page include?
There are many components these pages should include to connect with local audiences, such as keyword and geo-targeting headers, above-the-fold content, CTA buttons, images, reviews, embedded maps, a list of services, geo-specific mentions, and a unique selling proposition.
2. How many location landing pages do I need?
Ideally, each location your business serves should include its own unique landing page to connect with local audiences. However, avoid creating pages for locations that you do not currently serve, as this can mislead target audiences and waste your resources.
3. Do local landing pages improve SEO?
Well-optimized landing pages can improve search engine rankings, especially if they continually engage visitors and drive conversions. Using on-page optimization, backlinks, and other strategies, your pages could climb to the top of search results for target audiences over time.
Build High-Quality Location Landing Pages with Ignite Visibility
Need help creating location-specific landing pages that effectively convert? Ignite Visibility can provide you with content marketing, local SEO, and other digital marketing services to help you get the best results from these pages.
Our experts are able to:
- Identify your target audience and segment based on unique characteristics
- Develop in-depth and well-optimized landing pages for each service area
- Track the performance of each page for continual optimization
- Create plenty of other content to supplement your landing pages
- And more!
Find out what all we can do for your local marketing efforts when you contact us today!
Tyler is the Creative Marketing Manager.
