Every Digital Marketer knows SEO is important to rank their websites high on Google. But very few know that local landing pages can be optimized for search as well.
Think about what would you do to find a specific place near your area? You might be looking for restaurants near your location, gyms, or garage to repair your car.
Local landing pages help customers to find services or content for a specific location.
But how does a locally optimized page benefit businesses? A study shows that 80% of local searches come from mobile and are likely to purchase which results in a high conversion rate.
Isn’t that great for local businesses? It means the businesses who have optimized local landing pages can rank their business for the relevant service and provide results.
In this article, you will get to know about how to create SEO-optimized local landing pages that rank high in search engines. Ready? Let’s get started.
What is a Location Landing Page?
Location landing pages are the pages that are specifically designed to serve a targeted audience in a particular location.
For instance, let’s say your company sells CRM software for SaaS companies in the U.S., so you might optimize your landing page for specific keywords such as “SaaS CRM software”, “CRM software SaaS” and many more.
But to gain more visibility in search engines, it is important to attract local traffic. You might want to target specific people in specific cities to increase the traffic from search engines.
Hence, you need to create strategies for every local landing page and optimize it for the keywords including:
– CRM software services in San Francisco
– CRM services in Chicago
– CRM services in Denver
– CRM software in Chicago You get the basic idea. This helps you to gain more traffic in your service areas and ultimately more conversions.
Why Location Landing Page Is Important?
Nowadays most people buy everything online. Have you ever observed how consumers find places they want to buy?
Whether it’s a restaurant, gym, shopping mall, or anything they are looking for. They pick up the smartphones, head over to Google search, and ask voice assistants for “near me” places.
For example, people might search for things including:
- Best restaurants near me
- Gyms near me
- Shopping mall near me
I think you get the idea.
And so, to get visible in the search engines for the local search queries people are searching for, you need to be visible on platforms that your customers are likely to use.
But how do you do that?
Simple. Create a location landing page.
3 locations? 15 locations? 1000 locations? No matter how many locations are, location landing pages help you show up in local searches for a specific geographical location.
This tells search engines like Google that your business offers specific services in more than one area, whether it is within the city or on multiple continents. Hence, Google considers you as an authority in that area for the location you are serving for.
How To Create An Optimized Location Landing Page That Converts?
This step-by-step process will allow you to understand how we create the optimized location landing page. Ready? Let’s dive in!
Here are the 10 steps to creating an optimized local landing page:
- Identify your keywords
- Optimize your landing page URL
- Optimize your landing title
- Use proper heading tags on your landing page
- Write compelling meta descriptions
- Include contact details
- Call-to-Actions
- Publish unique content
- Build links
- Add high-quality images
1. Identify your keywords
It all starts with keyword research. It is super important.
You need to pick the keywords which users are searching on Google and also what you want to rank for.
For example, let’s say I am a ‘Heart Surgeon in California’ and so my landing page is designed for people who need heart surgeries.
Now if I target broad keywords like “heart surgeon” or “cardiothoracic”, it is very difficult to rank for these keywords. As these keywords are very broad and not specific.
Instead, I will target location-specific keywords like “Heart surgeon in California”. Or to go even more specific, like “Heart surgeon in Southern California.”
You see what I’ve done.
These are called localized searches because it is location-based keywords.
The more you go specific for keywords, the high chance you will rank. Because long-tail keywords are more specific in nature and are easier to rank for.
Don’t stop here. Keep trying out different variations of the keywords combined with location and make a list of keywords that users might type into Google related to the service you offer.
2. Optimize your landing page URL
URL means your landing page address and it should include your top keyword. For example, let’s say you target “California people for Heart surgeries” as we’ve discussed above.
So, you need to change your local landing page URL that includes the target location as well as the service you provide.
Thus, each landing page you create needs to target only one location, and each one has different URLs.
For this purpose, having a clear URL structure helps both Google and users to find what they’re looking for.
In fact, the location should be included in the URL slug but in a structured manner without looking spammy.
So, for example, if you’re providing SEO services in New York City, your landing page might look like this:
The example shows how you can include the keywords and location in the URL which helps both Google and users determine two things – “what service you provide” and “where you provide.”
3. Optimize your landing page title
According to Moz, the title tag is the most important part of any page on the website. Because the title is the first thing people see when they search for something in the search engine results.
Page titles tell the search engines what the content is about and are also a ranking factor in SEO.
Try to include both service you provide and your location in your page title. So that search engines and users know “what service you offer” and “where they can find you.” Same as we’ve discussed above in URL. Some things you need to consider while optimizing your landing page title are:
Keep your title short
The general rule for the title tag is between 55-60 characters because search engines show only the first 60 characters in the search results.
Don’t try to make it longer than that, else Google might cut it off without any prior warning(that is how Google works).
So, remove unnecessary words and focus on important keywords. Make sure, the title is easy to understand and readable to both users and search engines.
Include your top keywords first
Put your most valuable keywords first or in descending order because search engines place more significance on keywords that are on the left side of the title.
4. Use proper heading tags on your landing page
You should use only one H1 tag on your landing page, followed by H2 and other subheadings like H3, H4, and so on.
And the H1 tag on your landing page should clearly define your offer and explain what the page content is about. Ideally, you should include your main keyword in an H1 tag that you’ve used in the title to improve your rankings.
Sometimes visitors visit the landing page but the headline of the landing page is not enough intriguing and might confuse the reader which increases the bounce rate. Hence, it is important to have the heading tags to make sure users and search engines can understand what your landing page is about.
Also Read: What is Bounce Rate? Why Does It Matter (And How to Fix It Quickly)
5. Write compelling meta descriptions
Now comes the meta description which is the description of your local landing page. A meta description tells the visitor to click on the search result to know more about it and ultimately improves the click-through rate.
Your meta descriptions tell what users can expect on the landing page. Are you offering them an ebook? Tell them what they will get in the ebook.
To do that, you need to write a compelling meta description including your main keywords and secondary keywords as well. Make sure it is within the limit of 160 characters because Google cuts off the words if it exceeds the limit.
6. Include contact details
Now, this might look like the basic thing, but it is one of the most important things on a landing page. Start with the NAP (name, address, phone number) and make sure it is the same in other online directories as well as in Google My Business.
You can also add opening hours, holidays, an email address, services offered, and a contact form to get their details. Don’t forget to embed a map in your local landing page for each location you provide service. It helps visitors to find your business without difficulty.
7. Add Call-To-Action
There is a reason you’ve created a landing page – to tell the visitors what services you offer and want them to take a specific action. For this reason, you need a strong call-to-action (CTA). CTA is something either a text or video that evokes your customers to take the desired action.
Some of the most common examples of CTAs are:
- Buy Now
- Sign up
- Call Now
- Contact Us
- Get Quote
- Get Started
- Join Us
- Subscribe
You can have multiple CTA buttons on your website. Do an A/B test to make sure which CTA buttons work best on your landing page.
8. Publish unique content
You’ve heard the saying, “Content is the King” and it is true. Every business needs to create content to thrive in this digital era.
You need to create unique local content on every local landing page you have. You can create content around the service you offer, awards you received(for example Best Heart surgeon in the city), about your team, and offers you have.
Think about what customers need to know about your service and provide them with valuable information they should know.
You can include an FAQs section on your local landing page to answer location-related questions that users have in their minds. Customer testimonials and social proof are a good way to build authority and trust with your customers and boost sales. In fact, one review can increase your conversions by 10%.
9. Build backlinks
Now that you have published the content on your landing page, it’s time to build backlinks
A backlink means a link to your page from other sites.
Backlinks are one of the ranking factors in Google because it shows that the page is authoritative and provides useful information to people.
The more high-quality backlinks you have on your local landing page, the better results you will get. But do not fall into the trap of more backlinks, because quality is more important than quantity. A few quality links from high authority websites weigh more than the few links from low-quality websites.
So, let’s dive in!
Here are a few ways to build quality backlinks:
- Creating guest posting link building is one of the best ways to earn backlinks. Reach out to bloggers in your industry and request that you will write quality content on their websites. And ask them to link back to your website.
- You can share your content in online forums or blog posts related to your industry and add value by answering the questions that people have.
- Another way is to distribute your content on different social media platforms and engage people with your content. Although you will not get backlinks from social media platforms it will boost your brand awareness.
- Do competitor strategy analysis and check sources where they are getting backlinks from and try to gain backlinks from them. Easy and doable.
- Internal linking is more important as it helps Google to understand which pages of your website are important. You can link your existing pages to your local landing page that are relevant to the location. In short internal linking shares a link juice between pages.
- Another great way to internal linking is to use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are usually at the top of the website and help users to navigate pages easily. Google loves breadcrumbs as they help search engines to understand the website structure. You can use relevant keywords in breadcrumbs and link to your relevant page.
To know more about link building ways, check out this amazing resource
10. Add high-quality images
People get bored easily if the only thing that they see on the entire landing page is the text.
Have you ever found such a page that has only text? No images.
You might get bored and eventually leave that page. That’s what happens if you do not add images.
Make your landing page attractive and spicy by adding images. Add your company’s store images. Your team pictures. Maybe add videos of the people who gave you testimonials.
Don’t forget to add the filename when you upload the images on your page, because Google can read the image file names.
For example, if you upload the image with the file name ‘IMG-2347.jpg’, it does not tell anything that the image is about, but ‘white-racing-car.jpg’ does.
If you have a relevant file name according to the image you’ve used, Google will make them appear on search results. And one more thing you need to do is add image alt-text so whenever your image doesn’t appear on the web page for some reason, the text will be shown instead.
Conclusion
So, you’ve finally built your local landing page, make sure that you have optimized it well. Now it’s time to maximize your search results with the help of search engine optimization (SEO) such as building backlinks through guest posting.
Make sure you target the right location for your landing page with the location-specific copy. It takes time to build a landing page for a specific location, but it’s worth investing your time.
Hope this article helps you build your optimized local landing page. Want to know how to build backlinks for your landing page with guest posting? Guest Post Service agencies like us can help you build backlinks from high DA authority sites.