Local service pages are must be hyper focused to compete strongly in search results. Understanding key user behaviour is important to maximize the results from your website. Follow these top 7 tips to improve the amount of leads you are getting from your website.
What is a Local Service Page
A local service page is a page on your website that showcases one of your services but targeted to a specific location. For example if you were a lawyer in Austin, Texas the ‘local service page’ on your website would be something like.
DUI lawyer in Austin
on the web page
www.yourwebsite.com/austin/dui-lawyer
This page will contain information around your service with specific mention to the fact that the service you offer is specifically available to people who are looking up that area.
Understanding How People Look for Services
When looking for a particular server most people immediately search for the service within their local area if they are in the ‘qualified search’ stage of their search journey.
A typical search journey for a user may look something like this:
- How to choose an accountant
- Business accounting services
- Business tax accountants
- Business tax accountant New York
- (At this point the user will likely make an enquiry)
It’s important that business owners understand that it’s important for your website to show up both at the early stages of the search journey ‘business accountant’ and at the end of the search journey ‘business tax accountant new york’.
Understanding how people use search and the importance of local service pages will help generate more qualified enquiries to your website.
How you can use Location Service Pages for ‘local SEO’
Importantly if you are targeting people looking for a service in your location or a location you service your business must show up in Google for those keywords.
The best way to optimise your service pages is not to try and target every single location you service on one page but to separate out each service page you have into a location. This is the ideal way to optimise your website pages.
For example: If your business was in pest control and you served the Bay Area, San Francisco you shouldn’t try to target all the towns in that area on one page as there would be too many individual cities/towns/suburbs to mention in that page.
Ideally you would have a page structure like this:
- /Termite-Inspection
- /Termite-Inspection/Bay-Area
- /Termite-Inspection/Bay-Area/Napa
- /Termite-Inspection/Bay-Area
With specific Local SEO optimised content for each of those counties see Wikipedia for the Bay Area
You can use a free on page SEO optimisation tool to make sure that each of those pages are best optimised for the chosen keyword – for example ‘Termite Inspection Napa’ Here is a free tool to use.
Our Top 7 Tips To Improve Your Local Service Pages
Here we have our top 7 tips to improve the results from your local service pages.
1. Make Sure The Pages Heading (H1) Matches The Search Query
Location service pages are there to showcase to the user that they have arrived on a page that services exactly what they are looking for. Don’t be tempted to make the first message a marketing message, use the targeted keyword and it will provide confidence to the visitor and improve your conversion rate.
2. Highlight Your Contact Details Above The Fold (especially on mobile!)
By the time a user has searched for a service within a certain location they will be extremely qualified and be almost certain to want to make an action. Ensuring that your companies contact details are easily visible above the ‘fold’ is extremely important!
3. Show Your Address and Opening Hours
Especially important in hospitality but even if you are a professional services business visitors still want to know if you are open and where your office/head office is located.
Another tip is to include public transport information and nearby landmarks to make it easier for people to know where you are and how to get to you.
4. Show Your Local Reviews and Testimonials
On your local service page make sure you try and include reviews that specifically mention the area or testimonials from clients you have served within the location you are targeting on that page.
This adds trust and also importantly unique content! (more on that next).
5. Make Sure Part of The Page Has Unique Content
It’s almost impossible to avoid duplicate content 100% across your local service pages without significant work, however you can include elements within the page that are unique.
Some ideas for creating unique content are:
- Include an image of the local area or landmarks
- Create a list of the most common FAQ’s just for that area
- Highlight recent jobs or projects within that area
- List professional bodies / councils within the area
- Include specific testimonials and reviews from clients you have served within the target area
Having each page contain unique content is important ensure that Google will understand that these pages are not duplications and ultimately, it will improve your local service page rankings.
6. Include Your Focus Keyword but Avoid Overuse
For best results in Google search stuff your target keyword all throughout your content.
As a guide use your main keyword in your Heading – for example ‘Excavation Contractor in Denver, Colorado’ and use variations of the keyword throughout your content no more than 2 or 3 times.
7. Schema and Structured Markup
Adding Schema and structured data can help Google identify more accurately the content on your local service page.
While a more technical SEO aspect of improving your local service page it can be added easily using a WordPress plugin or even adding to the page using an online generator.
Once you have added to your pages make sure you verify it all works correctly using Google rich snippet testing tool.
Conclusion
Local service pages are a necessary and often overlooked part of a businesses website. Businesses that have executed this strategy well have reaped the rewards in increased leads and sales, it’s easier than you think to get started with local service pages. Pick one or two target areas right now and get started! Don’t forget to visit Legion Pages regularly for more advice on driving increased leads to your local service business.
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