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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, 'Local Landing Pages: A Guide To
Great Implementation In Every Situation'

<p>Posted by <a
href=\http://moz.com/community/users/13017\>MiriamEllis</a/pp>
Do you keep seeing terms like city landing pages and service area pages
mentioned on Local SEO blogs and find yourself wondering if this form of
marketing is a good match for your business? The <a
href=http://moz.com/community/q/i-ve-seen-and-heard-alot-about-city-specific-landing-pages-for-businesses-with-multiple-locations-but-what-about-city-specific-landing-pages-for-cities-nearby-that-you-aren-t-actually-located-in-is-it-ok-to-create-landing-pages-for-nearby-cities
target=_blank>topic of local landing</a> pages has been super-active in
the Moz Q&A Forum recently, and I've written this post to honor all of these
<a href=http://moz.com/community/q/nap-question-about-wider-service-area
target=_blank>great questions</a> we're getting. This guide defines
different types of local landing pages and identifies four distinct business
models united by the need to earn visibility for local-focused Internet
searches. By reading this guide, you will not only become fluent in the subject
of local landing pages, but will also be ready to implement the right types of
pages for your unique business.</pp>
<img
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/53352bd2cc5af1.28084350.jpg/ph2>Single-location
service area business</h2p>
This is the plumber working out of his house and traveling to clients in a 30
mile radius, the caretaker who sets out from her office each day to provide
in-home services to elders, and the tow truck operator going out from a truck
yard to rescue stranded drivers. If you travel from your home or office to serve
customers, rather than them coming to you for services, your business is the
definition of a single-location service area business (an SAB). You have a
dedicated street address and a local phone number, but you don't expect your
customers to come to you.</pp>
To my recollection, this is the precise business model around which the term
city landing page first came into common usage in the Local SEO industry, and
this form of marketing has evolved, in part, in an effort to counteract some of
Google's bias toward physical location. When Google created their local product,
it was definitely more geared toward brick-and-mortar businesses than SABs, and
it remains so to this day.</pp>
Most SABs will be unable to obtain rankings in Google's local pack of results
for any city other than the one in which they are physically located, and this
leaves business owners wondering how they can accurately represent the fact that
they serve in a variety of locations. <strong>The answer is to pursue
organic rankings, rather than local ones, for these other service
cities.</strong> Developing landing pages on the company website is one of
the key techniques for achieving this desired visibility.</pp>
<strong>How it works:</strong/pol>

<li>Identify the key cities in which you serve, beyond your city of
location.</li>
<li>Create a unique page of content on your website for each of these
cities.</li>
<li>Link to these pages from a top level menu, perhaps under a heading
such as Cities We Serve.</li>
<li>If possible, earn social mentions and links for these
pages.</li/olh3strong>FAQ:</strong/h3p>
<emstrong>Q: I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create
a page for each one?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> Without a unique page for each city, you're
unlikely to rank organically for relevant queries. That being said, it's not
typically reasonable to create 50 city landing pages all at once. Instead, start
by identifying your very most important cities (maybe 5 or 10 of them). Develop
well-planned, high-quality pages for each of them. You can then continue to
build out new pages over time, or, consider the idea of developing an on-site
blog to begin publishing ongoing content about your less-important service
cities as well as your important ones.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: I've put the same content with the city name swapped out on
20 different pages. Is this okay?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A: </strong>No! You're putting your website at risk for a
duplicate content penalty. The absolute rule of developing local landing pages
is that the content is unique on each one. If you can't find something unique to
write about, don't create the page.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: I serve my whole state. Could I just optimize for
that?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> You could take that approach, if keyword
research indicates that people search for what you offer by state. Typically,
though, users either search for a service + a city, and even if they don't,
Google will localize searchers' results based on the location of their device.
Hence, if you want to show up for fence builders in Denver, you've got to have a
page on your site that speaks to this need. If your website is simply optimized
for Colorado, it isn't locally optimized and you can't expect Google to consider
you as a relevant answer for queries containing or stemming from cities like
Denver, Boulder, or Colorado Springs.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: Can I build a Google+ Local page for each of my service
cities and earn rankings this way?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> Only if you have real, physical offices there.
You are only eligible to build one Google+ Local page per physical location
(with the exception of multi-partner practices and large campuses like
hospitals). It's forbidden to build them for any city where you aren't
physically located.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: Can I use virtual offices to create a presence in my
service cities?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> No. Google prohibits the use of P.O. Boxes and
virtual offices. Unless you've got a physical, staffed location where someone is
answering the telephone during stated business hours, you should not be using
such addresses to appear like you're physically located in your service cities.
This is not only against Google's rules, but it's misleading to your customers.
If you can get a real office and staff it, great. Otherwise, don't do
this.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: What if I just put a list of my service cities on my
homepage?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> This one's a bit complex. If you serve just a
few locations, it's perfectly fine to mention these in a natural manner on your
homepage, but you shouldn't count on this to be enough to earn rankings for your
business unless you have no competition. It's much better to build a page for
each city. Something you should definitely avoid doing is putting a big block of
text anywhere on your website listing cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster
guidelines cite this as a spammy practice.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: How can I meet the challenge of creating unique content for
each of my city landing pages?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> This is where your creativity counts most!
Consider the following options for brainstorming and creating unique, terrific
content:</pul>

<li>Showcase completed projects in each city, using text and
photos.</li>
<li>Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in
<a href=http://schema.org/Review target=_blank>Schema review
markup</a>.</li>
<li>Interview your service people who serve those cities, introducing them
to your customers.</li>
<li>Create and publish city-related videos on each page and offer a
transcript.</li>
<li>Offer city-specific specials in rotation from city to
city.</li>
<li>Consider creating infographics specific to each city.</li>
<li>Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or
issues that are important to a specific community and relevant to your
industry.</li>
<li>Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on
their own.</li>
<li>Create opportunities for user-generated content through contests and
promotions.</li>
<li>Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events
you participate in or organizations you sponsor.</li>
<li>Think outside the box; come up with something not on this list that
nobody else has thought of doing!</li/ulh2/h2p>
<img
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/53352bebbf38f5.33209389.jpg/ph2>Single
location brick-and-mortar business</h2p>
This is the restaurant, dental office, or retail shop with just one physical
location. In this case, the whole website is going to be optimized for the city
in which the business exists and local landing pages are typically not going to
be a good fit.</pp>
That being said, there is a common question surrounding this business model
that needs to be addressed; one that often arises when a business is located in
a small town near larger cities.</ph3strong>FAQ:</strong/h3p>
<emstrong>Q: My clients come to me from surrounding cities. I want to
rank for these other/bigger locales. Could I publish landing pages for each of
these places from which clients come to me?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> It's understandable that if your business is
located just outside of Dallas, Boston, or San Francisco and people come to you
from these cities for services, you might want to achieve high rankings there.
To my mind, this comes down to a question of relevance and usefulness. Would it
be relevant or useful to create pages on your website stating, Customer Joe
comes to us from Dallas? Probably not. Knowing a detail like this doesn't really
help anybody, and if this is your only connection to a neighboring community,
you probably shouldn't attempt to create local landing pages.</pp>
However, if your business has more of a link than this to surrounding towns or
cities, you might have something of value to write about. A legitimate
connection might include, but not be limited to, the following hypothetical
scenarios:</pul>

<li>A physician with privileges at a major city hospital</li>
<li>A therapist who speaks at major city conferences</li>
<li>An attorney who serves at courts in other cities</li>
<li>A sporting goods store that sponsors sports teams in other
cities</li>
<li>An organization that hosts events in other cities</li/ulp>
You should be able to determine if your business has this type of link to a
neighboring community that could generate interesting content. Will writing
about these things be enough to make you #1 organically for cities in which
you're not physically located? Likely not, but the effort could earn you some
visibility. Whether the investment of time and money will be worthwhile depends
on the findings of your industry research. If you can identify gaps you can fill
in the SERPs or know you've got sluggish competitors, a good effort here could
yield exciting results.</ph2/h2p>
<img
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/53352bfdd86498.66402710.jpg/ph2>Multi-location
brick-and-mortar or service area business</h2p>
In this scenario, you have more than one office, either from which your staff
travels to offer services or to which your customers come to do business. In
both cases you will be creating local landing pages for each physical address.
Provided that each location has a unique phone number and is staffed during
stated open hours, you are allowed to create a Google+ Local page for each
office, too.</ph3strong>FAQ:</strong/h3p>
<emstrong>Q: How should I optimize my website if I've got multiple
locations?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A: </strong>There are nuances to this situation which I'll
do my best to address here. Your scenario might consist of being a local
restaurant chain with five branches in a state or a multi-state franchise with
100 or more locations. If you've got a main headquarters and a just a handful of
additional locations, you might consider optimizing the homepage and about page
for the headquarters and putting the complete NAP of all locations in the footer
and on the contact page of the site, in addition to building a local landing
page for each office, optimized with its unique NAP in the opening
copy.</pp>
If you have a handful of locations, but they are all of equal value, I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand rather than the physical location, and then putting the complete NAP
of all locations in the footer and on the contact page, as well as the unique
NAP on each respective local landing page.</pp>
If you have a large number of locations (let's say 10 or more), I would
suggest optimizing the homepage, about page, and service description pages for
the brand, rather than locations. I would not put more than 10 NAPs in the
footer. I'd leave that for the contact page and for the individual local landing
pages. If it's reasonable, put navigational links to these local landing pages
in a menu. If not, make them accessible via a clickable map, ZIP code search or
similar feature. Include them all in an on-site sitemap.</pp>
Remember that the content must be unique on all of these pages to avoid
duplicate content penalties.</pp>
<emstrong>Q: I'm having trouble brainstorming ideas for making these
local landing pages unique. What can I write about?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> Consider the following ideas for
inspiration:</pul>

<li>Showcase your work in each city, writing up great project
descriptions.</li>
<li>If different services, products or classes are available at different
locations, describe these.</li>
<li>Create city-specific coupons and contests.</li>
<li>Develop infographics and videos, accompanied by text descriptions of
their content.</li>
<li>Offer advice that is specifically relevant to a given
community.</li>
<li>Offer excellent driving directions.</li>
<li>Introduce the staff at specific locations; interview them if
possible.</li>
<li>Add Schema-encoded customer testimonials for each city.</li/ulp>
<emstrong>Q: I run an SAB with several physical offices that each serve
their own radius. What kinds of landing pages should I be
building?</strong/em/pp>
<strong>A:</strong> You'll build a unique landing page for each
office, optimized with its unique NAP. You'll be linking from the Google+ Local
page for each office to its respective page on the website. Additionally, you
can then set about building up a set of city landing pages (with no NAP) for
each of the cities in the service radius of each office. If this ends up looking
like way too many pages, consider blogging to begin covering these service
cities over time with descriptions of your completed products.</ph2/h2p>
<img
src=http://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/uploads/blog/53352c111dba73.01631592.jpg/ph2>National
company desiring a local presence</h2p>
For national businesses, the increasing presence of local results for
important keyword searches has often seemed like encroachment rather than a
blessing. You may find that much of the search engine result real estate is now
being taken up by local companies. In such a situation, it's natural to wonder
if building out some type of local landing page would help you to gain back
visibility that may have been lost. As I see it, these are the two options in
this scenario:</pp>
<strong>1.</strong> If you have staffed, physical locations in
some cities and make in-person contact with your customers, then you are
eligible to create a local landing page and attached Google+ Local page for each
physical office. You can take advantage of the techniques described above in
this article. For cities you serve but where you're not physically located, you
should determine whether it is reasonable to create unique content for each
city, or if your customers' needs will be better served by something like an
interactive map.</pp>
<strong>2.</strong> If you have no physical offices or in-person
contact with customers, your business does not qualify for Google+ Local pages,
and the development of on-site local landing pages may just not make sense. For
example, if you're a virtual services provider supporting all of the US,
creating a page for every single city in the country probably isn't a reasonable
approach to marketing. After all, if what you offer is the same for everybody,
nationwide, what can you find to write about that would be different from page
to page across thousands of pages?</pp>
In such a scenario, it's likely better to offer excellent content about your
services accompanied by a map of your service cities, rather than attempting to
rank for every, individual city with the landing page technique. Likely, you
will need to rely on PPC to geo-target your advertising and turn to social media
to create a presence in important communities.</pp>
For national businesses, building a strong brand is critical. Google tends to
'get' brands and if someone is searching for Whole Foods Market or McDonalds,
Google is typically going to surface reasonably appropriate results for the
searcher, even if the company isn't getting their optimization perfect. Fair or
not, this is how I see local search working these days, and the smaller your
company is, the harder you'll have to work to combine excellent Local SEO
practices with efforts to get your brand name established in your target
communities.</ph2strong>In conclusion</strong/h2p>
Does it make sense? is the question I'd suggest as a determining factor for
the types of local landing pages you build. If you can build unique, helpful
pages, then the effort will likely be worth it. If you're having to stretch to
find a rationale for the development of these types of pages, chances are,
they're not a good fit.</pp>
Do you have inspiring suggestions for the types of content business owners can
create to make their local landing pages especially neat or helpful? If so,
please share your ideas with the community!</pbr /pa
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