Service Area Landing Page Q&A

[Charles_Murdock]

Good Morning,

I was wondering if some one could help me out with some questions I have regarding how to make my service area landing pages rank better. A majority of them are on position 11 right now, and I feel like there might be a few minor things I might need to do to make them rank better.

1.) Meta Description -

If I'm writing a meta description should I use an exact match for the keyword?

Something like "Hire us to do your dry cleaning in Topeka, Kansas today."

Or would I write "Topeka Kansas is in luck. We offer the best dry cleaning around" (I know this stinks from a call to action perspective, but it's the best example I could come up with off the top of my head).

2.) File Name -

Would I make the name "topeka-kansas.html" or would I make it "dry-cleaning-topeka-kansas.html"

3.) H1 -

should this be exactly the same as the title, or at least very close to it?

4.) Youtube Video -

Would putting a youtube video on the page act as a relevancy signal to Google?

5.) Images -

How many images would help on a landing page?

Does having original images help more?

6.) Length of Page -

Does the length of the page word wise help at all?

7.) Anything else -

What other tweaks can I make to a landing page to boost its rankings?

Thanks!
Charles

[brangen]

Don't forget the importance of mobile when it comes to local landing pages!

[cfguti]

Also you can obtain useful info for local SEO in http://www.whitespark.ca/blog or the local section in moz.com (http://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo).

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hey Charles

I would recommend reading the following resources:
On-Page Factors (Moz)
Meta Descriptions (Moz)
YouTube Ranking Factors (Moz)
SearchMetrics Ranking Factors Study 2014 (Moz & SearchMetrics)
Google My Business (Google)
Verify a local business on Google (Google)

Reason being, you're kind of asking broad and loaded questions (and that's totally fine!), and you're going to get so much more out of the above information than getting direction on one off questions. All of the above have great information and will help you moving forward. If you have any questions or comments, let me know! Good luck!