In this week’s Ask An SEO, Mehmet of Adana, Turkey writes:
“Hello. I own a business that provides cleaning services and serves about 120 different neighborhoods.
I would like to create separate articles for city, district, neighborhood, and service searches. Is this the correct local strategy and what should the link structure look like?”
Great question.
Since your question is about article and link structure, we’ll focus on that today.
But I want to make sure this is not yours that’s all Local Search Strategy.
A comprehensive local SEO strategy includes:
Whenever a customer is searching for a service like yours, you want to be there and instantly convert or direct them to the desired URL to learn more.
Now let’s talk about the idea of having separate articles organized by city, district, neighborhood, and service.
Local articles for each service and area?
This sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not a great user experience for prospective customers.
Articles and blog posts are at the top of the funnel to build awareness and get your brand name out there, and can be a great source of information.
It is also ideal for the consideration and evaluation stages, especially for long sales cycles and high-priced products.
But first, consider the intent of a local searcher who might be looking for cleaning services.
Certainly, there will be people who are very interested in a particular type of service, how it works, what products are used, etc.
But there are also many people who just want to know things like:
- Are you open when I need you?
- How much does this cost?
- Do you serve my area?
- Can I make an appointment for consultation?
- Do you have a place to stop by?
- Who else has used your service?
- What do people say about working with you?
- How far are you from where I need you?
- What kind of equipment do you use?
- Do you have an area of expertise?
I don’t want you to sift through the 800+ words of a written article to find a quick answer that could quickly lead to an appointment booking, phone call, or other desired action.
Coming up with enough unique information about each location to create an engaging, high-quality article is also a daunting task.
If you have the budget (currently or in the future) and want to invest in creating content that meets the intent of different types of searchers in each region, it can be part of a good promotional strategy.
But I don’t want to use the article as a primary all-inclusive destination for local searchers.
Use local landing pages instead
There are many more compelling ways to convey these answers than an article.
Ann Integrated map Searchers can determine how far you are from your business location or whether you serve the area.
Ann embedded video Provides a quick overview of facilities, equipment, technology and personnel.
local review Showcase your latest customer feedback and provide social proof of when and where your customers are considering using your service.
high quality photos You can help them understand the experience you are offering.
Local content and offers Meet your visitors’ information and conversion needs.
Click to call, book or contact The feature (or live message) makes it easy for people who are ready to convert.
These are all elements of a quality local landing page experience.
Here you can link to more detailed resources.
Sure, you can use landing page templates to create specialized pages for specific types of services, lines of business, and so on.
Most importantly, the local page looks like this:
- Responsive.
- Optimized for both search and conversion.
- Built to provide the next step for local searchers of all kinds.
- It’s properly marked up with relevant schema so Google can understand how and why your page is the best answer for relevant queries.
For tips on creating a great local landing page, see John McAlpin’s SEO Checklist to the Perfect Location Page.
Bring people to your local page now
Use locators to help searchers find the right location. Customers can also return to explore other locations and services by linking back to the locator.
Your locator will be displayed on the main menu, posted on the home page, and each local page is just a few clicks away.
Breadcrumbs are a great navigation tool here.
Image by author, November 2021You can use local page templates to keep the look, feel, and experience consistent and reduce the workload of creating them.
Duplicate content doesn’t affect your ranking, so don’t worry about adding generic, localized content whenever possible.
Mention local landmarks and intersections, share interior and exterior photos, describe special services offered at the location, and more.
Each Google business profile and online listing also links to the appropriate local pages. It’s a much better user experience than sending people to your home page from localized search.
See who else ranks organically and locally on the terms you want to rule. These are competitors, information portals, community organizations and media, directories, social content, and more.
Ask yourself:
- Can you beat them?
- Can I be listed or advertised?
- Can I have them linked to my site?
If you can’t find a way to appear organically or in the top 3 results on MapPack, we recommend running a local PPC campaign to drive people to pages relevant to your area.
You can also use articles and blog posts to provide more informative queries and direct users to locators to find their nearest location.
Learn 8 ways to use search to drive your local business in a competitive marketplace, watch our on-demand webinar on proven local marketing strategies that drive customer experience and ROI, and get more tips please.
Implement systems and processes to manage your growing presence
Finally, businesses with service areas across multiple locations present some additional challenges.
Creating all this content and landing pages is one thing.
But you need to keep everything accurate, measure engagement and performance, edit and update as well.
Even changing holiday hours can be a daunting task when you have to make changes across 120 Google profiles and local landing pages.
Additionally, data aggregators using out-of-date information, suggested edits by Google users, and ownership conflicts introduce all sorts of inaccuracies into local listings.
To make this easier, it doesn’t hurt to explore some local SEO tools and platform options.
Compare the cost of the tool, the effort you save, and the business benefits of improving your local SEO performance at this scale.
Building a local presence is no easy task. But if we can automate some of the work of monitoring, updating, and finding new opportunities as they emerge, we can go a long way.
Other resources:
ask SEO is a weekly SEO advice column written by the top SEO experts in the industry, curated by Search Engine Journal. Have a question about SEO? Please fill out the form. You may find the answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
Featured Image: Shutterstock/milo827
