The anatomy of locations pages that dominate local search

When it comes to ensuring that your site is found for not just functional terms but also so the Geographic locations that your services or products cover, it can feel like an uphill battle.

That said, this step is not one you can avoid - especially if you are looking to win the low hanging fruit from genuinely engaged to customers in a specific location.

We've become quite adept at building local variations of pages to cover the geographic locations your business operates it. Most importantly, we achieve this dynamically - saving you both time and money in the content creation process.

When building a location page that dominates the local search results, you may want to consider the following (tl;dr):

• A description of the Geographic area (as it relates to your company and your offering)
• A list of postcodes or zip codes that are covered by the current Geographic area
• A list of places and area names that are in or close-by to the current location
• A breakdown of opening hours if you have a physical store/presence in the area
• A map with a pinpoint to the place in question
• The schema (additional hidden markup) defining the geographic area you are covering

Creating a breakdown of the local area you are trying to cover is essential not just for search engines but also customers located close to where your service offering is. When writing a description of the area too often, we see examples of direct rips from Wikipedia with no reference to how it relates to a specific businesses service or product.

Make sure to include a breakdown of both the residential and commercial customers you can service within the local area and also describe the benefits of locals working with your brand.

By doing this, you fulfil an essential step when looking to dominate local search. By showing that your content has the semantic (related) information covering the area in question, you'll send all the right signals to Google and other search engines alike.

Whether you have multiple offices or operate via a franchise model, you should include the specifics of your:

• physical stores, and
• presence within a given location (i.e. where you do and can work without the need of an actual administrative building)

It is a powerful way of convincing potential customers to take action, either contacting you directly or leaving their phone number, email address and any other particulars via note, voicemail or online form.

Using this tried and tested approach, has allowed leading brands to communicate with local customers effectively.

As humans, we seek simplicity and convenience in everything we do. The same applies to our online experience when visiting a website. Including a map with a pinpoint on your location-specific pages is a fantastic means of visually displaying your geographic coverage.

Providing an interactive map is just the first step. Going on to include a direct link to get directions simplifies the entire process for website visitors and prospects.

Without getting too technical, there is a set of hidden information on a web page which can support your overall local search rankings. More so than ever, search engines like Google emphasise not just the content of a page, but it's on the lane context and meaning.

Location pages servers a fantastic way of achieving this by including rich snippets that explain the relationship between your services, brand and the current location in question. These rich snippets can help you appear higher in search engines for both natural results and location-based searches.

Rich snippets can get utilised for a range of content types. For example, highlight video content, a recipe, a blog article and much more. When done right, you'll benefit from more top 10 results for the services you offer. More importantly, you'll get seen in the areas that you cover. Please review a location snippet in action by looking at the sample below:

<script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "Restaurant",
      "image": [
        "https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg",
        "https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg",
        "https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"
       ],
      "@id": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com",
      "name": "Dave's Steak House",
      "address": {
        "@type": "PostalAddress",
        "streetAddress": "148 W 51st St",
        "addressLocality": "New York",
        "addressRegion": "NY",
        "postalCode": "10019",
        "addressCountry": "US"
      },
      "review": {
        "@type": "Review",
        "reviewRating": {
          "@type": "Rating",
          "ratingValue": "4",
          "bestRating": "5"
        },
        "author": {
          "@type": "Person",
          "name": "Lillian Ruiz"
        }
      },
      "geo": {
        "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
        "latitude": 40.761293,
        "longitude": -73.982294
      },
      "url": "http://www.example.com/restaurant-locations/manhattan",
      "telephone": "+12122459600",
      "servesCuisine": "American",
      "priceRange": "$$$",
      "openingHoursSpecification": [
        {
          "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
          "dayOfWeek": [
            "Monday",
            "Tuesday"
          ],
          "opens": "11:30",
          "closes": "22:00"
        },
        {
          "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
          "dayOfWeek": [
            "Wednesday",
            "Thursday",
            "Friday"
          ],
          "opens": "11:30",
          "closes": "23:00"
        },
        {
          "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
          "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
          "opens": "16:00",
          "closes": "23:00"
        },
        {
          "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
          "dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
          "opens": "16:00",
          "closes": "22:00"
        }
      ],
      "menu": "http://www.example.com/menu",
      "acceptsReservations": "True"
    }
</script>

Find out more about rich snippets here.

We hope that the suggestions above serve as a useful guide to working your way up the local search results ladder. Tackling some or all of these ideas will undoubtedly point you in the right direction.

Are there any thoughts above that you've applied already? Have you had any success with your location pages using techniques we haven't mentioned above? We'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on what has worked well for you (and what hasn't) - please reach out in the comment section below! We're also all about caring and sharing, so use our on-screen social widget to push this to your followers.