Why You Need Location Pages For Local SEO

In the world of online marketing, there’s an old saying that says, “content is king.” Meaning, of course, that you need to provide as much thoughtful, informative, and relevant content as possible to really strike a chord with your target audience.

The theory is that so long as you’re generating as much high value content as possible, search engine optimization (and related concepts like local SEO) will more or less take care of themselves.

This is absolutely true….but only to a point. To really generate the results that you’re after, you need to take things one step further.

One of the most important things for you to understand about SEO is that each page on your website can only rank for one word or phrase. If you run a business with multiple locations spread out over a massive geographic area, this can make targeting specific cities an uphill battle. If you try to approach all of them at the same time, you end up with a jumbled mess of keywords that doesn’t really appeal to anyone.

The solution is to build a variety of well-written pages around your service or business, each one designed to rank for the many key phrases and combinations that your audience is searching for. These location pages aren’t just a perfect chance to get your message in front of the widest possible audience, they’re also a way to make sure the right people are seeing your message at exactly the right time based on where they live.

Building a Great Location Page: Breaking Things Down

By far, one of the most important elements that goes into a great location page involves offering as much original content as possible.

For the sake of example, let’s say your business has three different locations and each one provides essentially the same exact products and services. Despite this, you can’t just copy and paste the content from one location page into another. You need to use each as an opportunity to really speak to the local community, showing them that you understand who they are, what makes them unique, and what specific challenges you can help them solve.

You could mention local events or speak to your affection for community landmarks. It doesn’t actually matter, provided that you have well-written, informative, and specific content to greet them, you’ll still be able to make that impression you need.

As always, another key ingredient to a great location page involves offering content that actually answers the searcher’s intent. Regardless of which keywords you’re targeting, you need to stop to think about why someone is searching for those particular terms. More than that, why is someone in this specific area concerned with the topic in question?

What problems do they have that you can help them solve? What concerns do they have that you’re uniquely situated to address? What can you help them do tomorrow with your products and services that they can’t do today by themselves? The answers to these types of questions are the ones that should be informing a lot of the content decisions for your local pages.

Finally, location pages are also a great opportunity to embed reviews as social proof – provided that you capitalize on the chance to offer reviews from local satisfied customers.

If you operate three locations – one each in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio – the same reviews shouldn’t run on all three pages. Embed reviews from Clevelanders on the Cleveland page. Make sure Columbus reviews are on the Columbus location page. Let prospects in those areas see that you’ve already helped the people they live and work around. You’d be surprised by what a difference it can make.

The Power of Location Pages and Local SEO

Of course, all of this sounds great in theory. But what about in practice? At Coastal Marketing Strategies, we’ve personally helped a wide range of businesses stand out and drive more customers to their business, and we leaned into the full benefits of location pages and SEO in order to do it.

Summer Breeze Outdoor Kitchens, for example, offers complete design-builds for top-of-the-line outdoor kitchens and happens to be among the most qualified contractors operating anywhere in Charleston, South Carolina, or the surrounding areas. Using dedicated location pages, we’ve been able to help Summer Breeze rank high in multiple cities – even ones that are over 100 miles away from their main service area.

BB Roofing is another example. It’s a family owned and operated roofing company specializing in emergency roof repairs on Hilton Head Island. Roofing is an incredibly competitive industry, but by leveraging local SEO and location pages we’ve helped the company rank number one for all of its “big money” key phrases.

But one example we’re particularly proud of takes the form of Autobahn Automotive Service, a Porsche specialist serving St. Charles and West Chicago. Their main goal is a simple one: they want to make the process of owning a Porsche as pleasurable as possible. Not only were we able to use location pages to help communicate that to the widest possible audience….but we were also able to outrank the actual Porsche dealership for keywords like “Porsche Repair in St. Charles.”

Last, but not least, we have the team at Coastline Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Center, a passionate team of sciatica treatment specialists that also operate in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Not too long ago, they were a practice that was preparing to enter into a market with over 45 chiropractors already targeted on their specific focus. By embracing all the best practices outlined above, we were able to rank this brand-new doctor in under 90 days for “sciatica treatment” and related keywords.

These are just a few of the many, many examples of what it’s possible to accomplish when you understand exactly how important location pages have become for local SEO in the modern era. According to one recent study, approximately 465 of people performing Google searches are looking for local information – a trend that is only going to increase as time goes on. By as soon as the end of the year, mobile devices alone are expected to influence more than $1.4 trillion in local sales.

Search engine optimization has always been important, and local SEO is exponentially so. That’s why location pages are ultimately so critical to your ability to grow and be successful. If each page on your website can only rank for one word or phrase, you need as many pages around your service or business as possible to rank for all the different phrases and combinations that people might be searching for. Location pages are a big part of how you do it, and they’ll only continue to become a more invaluable part of your strategy as time goes on.

If you’d like to find out more information about why location pages are such a core component of your larger local SEO strategy, or if you’d just like to discuss your own needs with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Coastal Marketing Strategies today.