Do You Still Need Location Pages for SEO?
In this fast-moving world of digital marketing and AI, what worked for a business yesterday won’t work so well tomorrow. One thing has remained steadfast, though: location pages for a local SEO strategy. With businesses and brands scrambling to keep up with algorithms and trends changing seemingly by the minute, it begs the question—are location pages still worth the investment as part of your local marketing strategy? The short answer: yes.
Here’s why you shouldn’t ignore them just yet.
What Exactly Are Location Pages?
Location pages are pages of your website focusing on a particular geographic area where your business is covered.
Consider this: You do landscaping work and serve many different locations. Instead of having one generic service page, you would create separate location-based pages like “Landscaping in Austin” or “Lawn Care Services in Dallas.” Each of these pages is tailored to the city or region, featuring localized content that speaks directly to people who might be customers in that area.
These pages usually combine the name of the city or neighborhood with the service you’re offering, so they’re very relevant to people who search for that service in that location. For example, if someone searches for “tax advisor in San Francisco,” they’re much more relevant to your business if you have a location page covering that exact service in San Francisco.
Why Location Pages Still Work
Location pages are very powerful since they connect your business to local customers. Search engines like Google try to return relevant results when someone searches for a particular service near their location. When you have a well-optimized location page with great content, it tells Google that you are the best option for customers living within that region.
These pages also enable you to demonstrate your local expertise. By providing area details—such as knowledge of local regulations or services catering to the local climate—you are not just some business, you are that local expert. For many service-oriented businesses, showing your local expertise engenders trust with potential clients and makes them far more likely to select your services over someone who does not have the same level of local expertise. As an example, let’s say your business offers Florida homeowners pool leak detection services. The business must demonstrate knowledge of the Florida climate to earn customers’ trust in the area.
Another major advantage of location pages is that they allow for targeting multiple areas without the use of different websites. You can keep everything under one domain, which, first of all, allows easy website management and provides consistency in branding. In addition, search engines also like a nicely structured site, so this will likely help your rankings in general as well.
How They Support a Local SEO Strategy
Location pages also factor into the grand scheme of local SEO. They afford search engines the knowledge of where one operates a business in the world and the types of services one carries out in a specific area. Thus, it is essential for local search ranking, as Google considers relevance and proximity.
Area pages also help support your Google Business Profile. These profiles are a requirement for the local map packs, and the information on location pages can reinforce what’s on your Google Business Profile—working in tandem to provide a singular message throughout your online listings. That’s exactly the type of consistency that creates trust on both sides: with search engines and with customers.
You can also obtain useful backlinks from local businesses, directories, and even local media by incorporating location pages. People are likelier to share or link to your content when specifically targeted at their community. Backlinks from these sources will improve your search rankings since these others have already achieved credibility with the major search engines.
In addition to SEO, of course, location pages give you a kind of power in tracking and knowing the level of responsiveness of your local marketing effort. Due to the traffic, leads, and conversions coming from each location page, you’ll know what area is performing well and which area might need some more focus. You can now fuel further content and marketing decisions with data and see where to focus your efforts.
Why You Can’t Ignore Location Pages
Even with all of the changes in digital marketing and the AI uprising, the need for localized content remains important for small businesses. In fact, this is more important now than ever, as digital competition in local markets stiffens. Location pages are super powerful and a no-brainer approach to providing the real content that both search engines and potential customers want.
In simpler terms, location pages are not yet a thing of the past. If you are looking forward to scaling your local visibility and targeting more customers around where your business is located, never underrate the importance of well-optimized location pages that give rise to the real potential of your business within your locality.
Contact us if you need help enhancing your local footprint with this strategy and more.
