Search engines find and rank your website through your content. Your content tells them how valuable you are as an answer to potential search engine queries, what your website is about, whether you’re engaging to your visitors and more.
That’s why it’s important to think about what you add to your site and make sure you have pages dedicated to topics that are relevant to visitors. One of the most important for any business that serves local clients are “location pages.” These are a crucial part of local search marketing and branding, even though very few websites seem to utilize them.
The Value of Location Pages
It’s not uncommon for a website to simply have a homepage that lists the locations they service, with no other information about locations anywhere else on the site. It’s much more effective, however, to create individual pages for each city or area that you target, and placing it on a “locations” section of your site, or somewhere that becomes a main page. The value of this includes:
- Search Engine Targeting – Search engines do not know where you’re located, and barely know anything about you. While listing locations on your home page can help, a targeted location page is easy for search engines to decipher. They then become more likely to rank that page for anyone that searches for that location, like “Brooklyn Branding Company.” With each page comes a new search term, and a new page that you can use to rank for the location in search engines.
- Sales Funnels – Locations also make it easier for you to create customized landing pages that are specific to your location. For example, someone that searches for a specific city may be more receptive to content that targets them and their needs, and you can easily adjust this accordingly to match what these customers may be looking for. It allows you to better create a sales funnel and makes it easier to work on content more to improve conversions.
- Validation – Of course, another very valuable reason to have pages on your site is that they validate your location for potential customers. Imagine that you’re a New York local company that services both Manhattan and Brooklyn. Yes, it’s possible to still attract phone calls from those that want to know if you service their area, but if you have a specific page that is targeted to Manhattan and a page that is targeted to Brooklyn, no one will question whether or not you provide services to their city. They’ll see the page on your site and know that you do, and be more likely to call you if they need you.
Most companies avoid location pages because they tend to be a bit repetitive and aren’t necessarily something obvious that needs to go on your site. But they’re extremely valuable and considered a core part of content marketing, and something you will want to consider as you create your website and decide what content to post.
