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The Ultimate Guide to Creating Location Pages

Author: Eleanor Hecks

Local customers make up the largest portion of many businesses’ revenue. They’ll send new leads your way, leave excellent reviews, and share their experience with family and friends. Local SEO can send the right audience to your pages at the perfect time.

Internet Live Stats reports approximately 1.9 billion websites in 2022, but not all are active simultaneously. Even if you reach a broader audience than just those in the same location as your headquarters, you’ll want location pages so people can track your news by their area.

For example, if you have several restaurants in the state, you can create a location page for each with a map, store hours and other details. Location pages help your site rank for keywords, such as Indianapolis, Indiana, or New York City.

How can you ensure your location pages rank high in search engines and attract local traffic? Here is the ultimate guide to making sure you speak to browsers in the language they understand.

1. List Hours of Operation

One key reason people look for a particular location is to learn when it’s open. If you have multiple locations, you can list them on a single page along with an address and store hours. If you’re experiencing any interruptions in opening, include details so people don’t drive out of their way to get to your business only to find it closed.

Source: https://roosterswings.com/locations/view-all-locations

Roosters has multiple restaurant locations listed on its page. Each boc includes details such as location, address, store hours and directions to the dining establishment. Currently, there is a note on most listings about online ordering. You can add any details that might pertain to local changes and availability as it applies to your business.

2. Place NAP Details First

NAP stands for name, address and phone number. Ideally, you’ll include this information at the top of your page, so it’s the first thing people see. Search engines often utilize NAP details to understand where best to place your site in search results. If you’re located in a specific county and users search there for a service such as yours, they’ll raise your rank significantly.

Some experts advise building a separate page for each location. You can test both ways and see how it impacts search engine results pages (SERPs). If you choose to list all sites on one page, you should separate them in some way like Roosters did, such as in grid-style boxes.

3. Tell a Story

Who doesn’t love a good tale? You can easily place one on your location page while including information to help customers decide if you’re the right choice for them. A story might explain what you do, how the company started or why you serve specific locations. It must also include local factors and utilize keywords and phrases that make sense for ranking.

Source: https://www.chardonlabs.com/locations/kentucky

Chardon Laboratories offers water services in 13 different states. It provides location pages for each state and shares a little about the traditions in the area. Each page includes the popular industries for each state and some of the more significant manufacturers.

4. Choose the Right Keywords

Each location has specific keywords that trigger geolocation results. In Des Moines, Iowa, you might use phrases like “restaurants in Des Moines.” A car repair shop in Indianapolis might use “car repair Indianapolis,” “car repair circle city” and so on.

Make sure you include target keywords such as restaurant, dining and food in addition to being location-specific. The key is to grab traffic and bring it to your pages.

5. Get Location-Specific With Content

Adding content to your site gets you noticed and gives you something to share on social media platforms. Rather than writing about how to plan a wedding, you might share venues in your town, for example.

Other businesses might cater to activities in the area or services only people in a certain climate or terrain would need.

Source: https://aceraft.com/blog

Ace Adventure Resort offers different activities in the New River Gorge area in Fayette County, West Virginia. People looking for activities in the area will often search for terms used on its blog. All articles are about local events, so users may stumble on the page and find other details that interest them.

6. Add Reviews

Google and many other browser algorithms favor newer content. Reviews give you some user-generated content and offer a way to frequently update your location page with fresh material so the page pulls up in SERPs more often.

You might add a review or two under the NAP. You could also write something like “Have you been to this location? Give us a quick review” to encourage additional feedback and material for local SEO.

Ask Your Customers What They Want

The internet changes rapidly, so what works for location pages this year may not in the next. Be open to trying new things and testing your pages to see how ranking changes and what your users respond best to. Ask your customers what they want and what is most helpful for a location page. Over time, you’ll refine your offers and come up with a site that works with local SEO and is user-friendly.

How to Effectively Increase Brand Visibility

Author: Eleanor Hecks

Brand visibility is imperative to success and relates to more prevalent customer recognition and awareness. It denotes the ability of customers to recognize a brand or business based on various factors.

It is commonly associated with visual representations of a brand such as the business logo, colors, and products, but it’s much more pervasive than that. For example, Apple and Google are synonymous with technology products, including computers, mobile devices, and so on. Every time those types of products are brought up, or the related topics are in focus, those two brands come to mind, among others. That is because they have effectively boosted brand visibility, in many different ways.

Of course, effectively increasing brand visibility for a small business or medium-sized operation, with limited resources, is quite a bit different than doing so for a corporate entity. What goes into brand visibility, and what are some ways to enhance and leverage the concept?

1. Optimize for Search

These days, there is no valid excuse for NOT optimizing a business or brand website for SEO, or search engine results. You can do this by focusing on relevant keywords, namely terms that your customers will be searching for. It’s not something you have to do alone either, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of SEO experts willing to help. It’s also accessible to all businesses, big and small. 

Choose keywords, use a proper SEO tool, and begin adding those keywords to your site. Coming up with a clear content marketing campaign that hits all those relevant keywords and delivers enriching and engaging material is just as important. Moreover, the keywords can be embedded within the web copy on all pages, product descriptions, headers, and much more.

2. Use Smart Advertising

Advertising and marketing are critical for boosting visibility, across print ads, digital ads, and various other mediums. But one of the best ways to get your name out there is to use creative measures, doing something a little different than everyone else. Some examples include clever office branding, unique product packaging, local sponsorships, or even customer rewards and incentives.

Like all forms of advertising, the idea is to get your brand out there and in front of as many eyes as possible. Doing it in a witty or creative way ensures that both the medium and the content stand out, creating a memorable experience, and vastly boosting brand awareness.

3. Tap Into Influencer Marketing

The term “influencer” has taken on new meaning in the digital frontier. It doesn’t just include celebrities and public personas, but also YouTubers, social media users, content creators, and much more. Moxy Hotels launched a YouTube channel featuring Taryn Southern, a popular influencer that became so popular, it now has multiple seasons’ worth of content.

Just as you would with celebrities during the days of old, you can tap into an influencer’s audience and resources to build awareness about your brand. You can do it by offering products for review, paying for ad placements or mentions, sending out free swag, opening discussions with creators, and so on.

The trick is to choose the right influencers for your niche, products, and brand. Instead of just picking someone because they’re popular, try to find someone local. Alternatively, you can look for someone that works with the types of products or services you offer, such as tech, makeup, accessories, or whatever.

4. Enhance Offline Marketing

In the digital age, and with so much happening online, it’s easy to overlook the offline world. Every business should invest some time and resources enhancing offline marketing efforts. It includes product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising or referrals, radio advertisements, networking, public events, cold calls, and much more. Basically, the term encompasses anything that happens offline and away from the internet.

Wearing yourself thin trying to do it all is not the goal, nor is it a good strategy. But choosing one or two channels to focus on, and then becoming the best of the best is the way to go. If you choose to participate in local job fairs or networking events, then do it with a splash! Host a keynote discussion or panel. Give out free swag to all booth visitors. Make it memorable and get your brand out there.

5. Reward Your Customers

To build loyalty, entice customers to share their experiences, and naturally increase awareness, you need to be going above and beyond. Rewarding your customers is an excellent way to do that. The first thing that comes to mind is a customer loyalty program or cashback rewards, but while those are great solutions, they’re not the only strategies that exist. There are many ways to give back and reward your customers, not necessarily through monetary incentives.

Bundling small gifts with every purchase is one example. Honing customer service programs to near perfection to ensure customers are always taken care of, is another. Another still might be something as simple as offering free shipping for all online orders. You’ll need to review your competitors so you know what they’re doing and what they offer, and then you can up your game. Ensure that your customers continually have positive and memorable experiences, and that will create a cyclical system where those people are always willing to share and talk about your brand.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Continue improving and innovating as much as possible, but also establish a way to measure brand visibility. Doing so is easier than you might think. You can look at website traffic, and how much it’s growing, review the search volume of your keywords, check in-store traffic, look at trending topics or messages about your brand, and much more.

Search optimization should always be on your plate, which means you should continue utilizing your chosen keywords and researching more. Smart advertising, offline marketing, and influencer support should also be persistent strategies. Don’t forget to reward your customers or your employees on the frontlines!

Once you put that vehicle in motion, don’t use the brakes, continue your momentum. Measure, iterate, improve, and then re-measure. It’s the best way to increase visibility, build strong and positive awareness, and cement your brand in the annals of history.

Eleanor Hecks is editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.