Although traipsing through your website and constantly adapting it to suit a changing audience can seem like a challenge that has no measurable gain, by optimising your business’s local landing pages, you can achieve your own SEO goals as well as smoothing out your customer’s experience with your brand.
What are local landing pages?
Local landing pages, or ‘geolocator’ pages, are sections of your website that may be applicable to only one location. They draw on that location’s information and landmarks to present a well-rounded knowledge of that area, thus boosting them up in the rankings for that search.
For example, if you offer a cleaning service across several areas in Kent and East Sussex – including Tunbridge Wells, Crowborough, and Maidstone, it would be beneficial to make a local landing page on your website for each of these locations. Then, if a customer were to search for ‘cleaning service Maidstone’, all of the information you have provided on your local landing page for this area would ideally mean that you rank at a good position in the Google search, and the customer is directed to your website. Of course, this will require building up some backlinks and keywords to gradually improve the page’s SEO, but we’ll provide you with some pointers for this. You can also find some additional information on getting started with SEO here.
Geo-locator pages can be really beneficial for prior segmentation and qualification of your audience, who may not be interested in your other locations, but come to your website as a result of discovering your local landing page. If you receive an influx of enquiries from your Tunbridge Wells page, you can estimate that your business is best performing in this area, and work to optimise your other pages to this level.
What benefit does location-specific content have?
- Optimise organic search:A well-designed local landing page will rank highly on search engine result for local searches that contain keywords relevant to your business. Organic results are more respected by consumers (as opposed to paid ads that rank at the top) and are more likely to lead to conversions.
- Create consistent unique content:No two locations of a business are exactly the same, and local pages provide you with the ability to illustrate how your business can differentiate. For example, your London restaurant location will be totally different to your Brighton one, from the scenic views to the team members that work there.
- Generate leads:A landing page allows you to integrate calls to action from contact forms to quote and call buttons, turning your local landing pages into conversion opportunities, without the barriers created by clicking around your site.
How can I optimise my local landing pages?
- Use keywords in your title tags
Search engine ‘crawlers’ rely on title tags to understand what is on a webpage. This is an HTML element that identifies the title of a webpage – you may have spotted it when uploading content to your Content Management System (CMS), or backend of your website in the past. Ensure your business name and location is included, as well as the most important keyword you want to optimize for. For example, our title tag would read, ‘Eonic, Kent, website design’. If you don’t have backend access to your website, get in touch with your CMS provider to check that your title tag is optimised for you. - Check your alt descriptions
Alternative or “alt” tags should be applied to all images on your local landing pages. These provide text descriptions for your images that not only assist visually impaired visitors to your site but also help search engines understand what your images are. Optimized tags should describe the image accurately – this is another opportunity to include keywords. Ensure you supply alt text when you pick images for your local landing page, or brief your inputter to do this. - Keep your URLs clear
Aim to avoid code-like text in your URLs such as special characters like ‘%’ or phrases like ‘index.html’ – these can lower your ranking. Keeping plain-text URLs mean your webpage will meet Google’s usability standards and provide a better user experience for your customers; another way you can smooth out your customer journey. - Optimize for mobile:
Nowadays, over 50% of website visitors are on mobile, meaning your local landing page has to display correctly in this screen format. Google provides a Mobile-Friendly Test for this very purpose! If your local landing page doesn’t pass the test, speak with your web developer about responsive design. Decent CMSs, including Eonic’s choice, Protean, cleverly create web pages that adapt automatically to the reader’s screen size so there should be no need to have multiple versions of your local landing pages. - Check your loading time:
Slow load times can negatively affect your online revenue as well as throwing a spanner in the works for your customer journey. According to this report by Doubleclick, who are owned by Google, a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load is abandoned 53% of the time. Google’s mobile speed testing tool comes in handy here. Speak with a web developer about improving the loading times of your local landing pages.
Local landing pages aren’t just beneficial for your SEO: they allow you to showcase how your business diversifies by location, as well as providing a personalised customer experience for visitors searching for services in their area. By investing time in optimising these pages, you have the opportunity to reach new areas and improve your customer journey hugely.