Local businesses must ensure they can be found by those looking for them – both online and on the road.
Location pages on your website are the perfect place to direct people to your place of business while giving additional information that might be helpful to them.
Location pages also signal important information about your business to search engines, which helps make your website more relevant for certain search queries.
Let’s dive into what makes a perfect location page for SEO and visitors:
- Contact information (NAP + W)
- Available services/products/features
- Map and directions
- Parking information
- Visuals
- Hours of operation
- Marketing copy
- Reviews
- More helpful information
- Page optimization
- How to handle multiple locations
Think about your target audience
Before choosing which strategies to implement in this article, think about your target audience. What information is going to be the most helpful for them?
For example, if you are a moving company, your location pages may direct people to your location and give vital information about the city you’re located in.
After all, people who are moving in may want to know more about the local community they are entering into.
In this scenario, you might dedicate some text to things to do in the area, the schools, the crime rate, etc.
Always start with the page’s purpose – what do you want it to do for your visitors? Then, the content strategies will follow.
If you decide not to implement every suggestion in this article, that’s OK. Do what is best for your business and your audience.
Contact information (NAP + W)
What would a location page be without an address?
A physical address is a signal to Google for ranking, and the search engine wants to rank businesses closest to the point of search (where the searcher is).
But what is often forgotten is to make sure the name, address, phone number and website (NAP + W) have the most up-to-date information.
(This can get trickier to keep up to date when you have multiple locations.)
And when I say up to date, I also mean that the NAP + W on the site is the leading example for the NAP + W across all other online channels like online directories, social media profiles, etc.
Search engines like Google want to be able to trust a business, and making sure the NAP + W information is consistent everywhere is key.
Available services/products/features at the location
Letting people know what to expect at your location can be helpful.
For example:
- If you’re a coffee shop, you might include a menu.
- If you’re a storage facility, you might show the availability of storage units.
- If you’re a boutique hotel, perhaps you might show which amenities are available at that location.
The following screenshot from a location page at a storage facility business at StoragePost.com shows what types of storage are available at the specific location.
So think about what you can tell people to give them an at-a-glance view of what you offer at your location.
This helps them know what to expect (and they don’t have to navigate to other pages to find the most important information).
A map and directions
Embed a map (preferably a Google map) that shows your location.
A dynamic embedded Google map versus a static map makes it easy for people to click the map and get directions to your location, like how we do at BruceClay.com:
Here’s a Google help file on sharing a map to get you started.
It’s hard to imagine a world where someone doesn’t rely on GPS to get there, but just in case, you might consider giving text directions from the major directional points (from the north, south, east and west, and citing any landmarks).
Locals may be able to glance at those quickly and know where they are going without the map. And it could be helpful if the map or someone’s GPS isn’t working.
Here’s an example from StoragePost.com, where I pulled a blurb about directions to the facility:
Parking information
Nothing stresses out some people more than having a nice GPS-guided tour to your location, only to be faced with the chaos of figuring out where they can stop their car and get out.
Giving parking information is a nice way to prepare people for what to do when they get there.
For example:
- Do you have parking on-site, or is there only street parking?
- Do you have to pay for parking or is it free?
- Where do they turn to get to the parking lot?
- What times of day are the busiest for parking?
- Is there a parking garage nearby if need be?
The answers to these questions can be a lifesaver for some. And for some locations with tricky parking and some city streets, this is an absolute must.
Visuals of your business
Another way to help people know what to expect is to have visuals of your business.
You can do this by:
Posting photos of your building and the inside of your business
Make sure they are high-resolution, good-quality photos. You can use the same photos in your Google Business Profile. (Hopefully, you have one set up as a local business.) You can also optimize these images so that they have a better chance of showing up in the search results.
Embedding a 360-degree virtual tour
Give people a virtual tour of your business. Google “how to embed a Google virtual tour on your website” for more tips.
Adding a video
Add a video that gives an overview of your business. You can create the video, upload it onto YouTube, and then embed it on the location page.
This way, it will do double duty for you. It serves as interesting content on your YouTube channel, helps your location page visitors and has the ability to rank in the search results.
Dig deeper: 5 top tips to boost your local SEO efforts
Hours of operation
One of the most essential bits of information you will have on your location page is the hours of operation. Let people plan their trip to you.
This one is self-explanatory – be sure to include the days and times you are open.
And if you want to add a little extra, you can say when your peak hours of operation are (as in what days and times you tend to be the busiest). Some people appreciate this so they can avoid the crowds.
Marketing copy
Why not use the location page as yet another place to differentiate your business and get people interested?
Consider adding marketing copy that shows what makes your business great, how you are different from the competition and why people won’t be disappointed in giving you their business.
Reviews
A location page is a great place on the website to display reviews of your business.
You have creative reign when it comes to how you want to display your reviews. You can display star ratings, or you can add testimonials.
For testimonials, consider:
- Displaying localized reviews that mention the local services, products or experiences you provide.
- Including the person's name and perhaps things like the city, town, or neighborhood the customer resides in.
- Adding the person’s picture so you can to make it more personal.
More helpful information
You can add value to your location page in many different ways. Here are some ideas:
Write about the community
Take some time to say a little bit about the surrounding areas. This can infuse the page with localized content, which is good for SEO but also provides value to visitors.
For instance, if you have a business that caters to customers who are potentially new to the area or looking to move to the area, you can talk about the community, what it has to offer and maybe a little bit about its history.
Here’s an example from StoragePost.com right on one of their location pages:
Transportation, accommodations, attractions
If you have a lot of out-of-town customers, you might tell them how to get to and from Point A to Point B, where they can stay the night and what they can do while there.
That’s what we do on BruceClay.com:
Helpful articles
If you have written any relevant blog articles on your site that relate to the location, then link to them from the location page.
This can additionally drive more traffic to your blog and keep visitors on your site longer.
Here’s what StoragePost.com does:
Dig deeper: How to use location-specific authority content for SEO
Page optimization
As with any other key page on your website, you want to optimize your location page.
There are a ton of things you can do to improve the relevancy of your page. Some of the basics include:
- Making sure the content feels as if it has been written with a certain degree of expertise or experience, depending on the topic. For example, if you’re writing about local stuff, you’d better have local experience in that place (or at least be able to research it really well).
- Ensuring the content is updated as needed to keep it evergreen.
- Having a page that offers a good user experience, such as those factors outlined in Google’s page experience concept (mobile-friendliness, a secure site, no intrusive pop-ups, Core Web Vitals).
- Meta tags, heading tags.
- Image optimization, including alt text.
- Schema, including NAP+W schema and review schema. See schema.org for LocalBusiness (scroll down to the bottom for more specific business categories) and Review.
How to handle multiple locations
If you’re lucky enough to expand your business to multiple locations, you need a strategy for handling location pages.
For this, you must create a “Locations” section on the site where each location will have a corresponding webpage.
Here’s how StoragePost.com handles it on the homepage:
When you click through, you are brought to a main location landing page, where you can click on states or individual locations:
Choosing a Bronx location brings you to that specific location page:
You must ensure that the content is unique to each page, using some of the tips outlined earlier in this article on creating content for location pages.
Dig deeper: Optimizing local landing pages for search: 8 best practices
Boost your local visibility by nailing down these elements
While location pages might seem like one of those less-important webpages on your site, nothing could be further from the truth.
Location pages provide useful information to website visitors and customers and improve your website’s relevancy with search engines.
The post How to create a perfect location page for SEO and visitors appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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