Do location pages boost the homepage?
-
Google has stated that businesses should spend time creating location pages for the various service areas that businesses operate in. What I want to know is, it is equally about boosting the relevance of the site as a whole, as well as ranking that individual page in the local area. Does Google take into account the fact that you have the location page and reward the homepage by favoring it more in that local area, or is it simply about ranking an individual page in each town/city?
-
Hi John!
This is a good question. I highly, highly recommend watching Rand's Whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday
This does a better job than I can, in a few sentences, to explain how an individual page of your website relates to your overall brand. I think this is where your thoughts are going with this. Please, watch the video and come back with further questions.
In the meantime, what I'll say is that what you are actually trying to do is to build topical authority. So, if your business is a landscaping company serving the San Francisco Bay Area, all of those individual topical pages you are building to represent your service areas (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc.) go toward building your overall authority. And, too, of course you can build internal links from your location landing pages to your homepage, if appropriate, but that may not always be the case.
Hope the video helps!
-
Thanks for the kind mention of that article, Ma Veronica B.
-
Hi John,
Good question. Local website optimisation is part of a whole. If LWO is done properly and there is consistency of the NAP all over the internet, as well as by having good reviews. Therefore, it will attract more visitors and as a good secondary effect, the website performance in SERPs - if it is technically correct, no Penguin nor UX issues, - yes it might help to boost the rank of the homepage. Although, you might should consider to optimise the homepage as well. The best guide by Miriam Ellis.
Mª Verónica B.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
HomePage Stopped Ranking For Brand on Aged Site
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 27 years in SEO). Our home page stopped ranking for our brand "BlowFish SEO" and is no place to be seen when searching our brand. I do get the knowledge panel on the right-hand side of the page. and our about page now comes up number #1. Technically the on-page SEO is correct This page has ranked for many years for our Brand. If I search blowfish SEO west palm beach I get the home page and all the nice site links. And other various variations of branded search. Our company has lots of mentions across the web and branded backlinks. No manual penalty has been placed on us. Im starting to think some type of negative SEO attack but I can't find it. I do know someone is using my name and brand along with many other companies in cloaked doorway redirected pages to gain SEO leads.. Yeah I know I've complained about it to Google they do nothing about it.. Other things I've checked: No one else seems to be using my brand Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at the front (rest of site it's at the end) No manual penalty XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with an accurate URL. Ive added an image of the search result when I search BlowFish SEO Please note the top result is PPC the about page is 1st organc Any other ideas that I may be missing? BT8F1fD.png
Local Website Optimization | | BlowFish-SEO0 -
Are core pages considered "cornerstones"?
To check that I understand the terminology, "cornerstone articles" are posts (or pages) that have some extensive, detailed, important information about a subject that other blog posts and articles can link to in reference, right? For example, a website for an auto repair shop might have a blog post about what cold weather does to a car's transmission and that post could link to a cornerstone "explainer" article that goes into more detail explaining to car-dummies like me what a transmission even DOES. But are core pages also in this category of cornerstone content? Or are they something entirely different and should be constructed accordingly? By "core pages", I mean the base-level pages about what your business is and does. For the repair shop example, I mean things like an "About Us" page or a "Services" page*. *or broken up into individual pages listing the services related to brakes, engine, wheels, etc. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | BrianAlpert780 -
City Pages for Local SEO
Hey Mozzers, I have a local SEO question for you. I am working with a medical professional to SEO their site. I know that when creating city pages, you want to try and make each page as strong as you can, showcasing testimonials from people who live in those towns, for instance. Since my client is in the medical profession, i was going to include a list of parks from that town and say something about how, "we want to encourage good health, etc." However, i began to wonder whether i should just create one, large resource for the surrounding towns having to do with parks, dog parks, and athletic activities and link to it in the top nav. thoughts? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
Business location in small town - How to target meta title?
So it's common practice to include the city/state in page titles and within the content. However let's say that a business is located in a small town, but serves customers in surrounding, larger towns. You might say that it's not worth mentioning the small town because there would be few searchers in that area. However, does Google take into account the distance a searcher is from the business location, in relation to the page title, as well as the Google my Business page? Obviously you can't go stuffing all of the surrounding towns into your homepage or main service pages. Is there any value in mentioning the small town, or is it fine to leave it out too? What has been your experience?
Local Website Optimization | | OliverNeely0 -
What more can be done to get Google to change the landing pages it uses for certain search terms?
For one of my SEO campaigns, Google is using the website's home page as the landing page for the majority of search terms being tracked. The website splits its products by region and so we want specific region pages to rank for search terms related to that region, rather than the home page. We have optimised each regional page to a reasonably high standard and we have ensured that there is a good amount of internal linking and sign-posting to those region pages, however, Google is still using the home page. The only complication is that for the first few months there were canonical tags on these pages to the home page. These were removed around 3 months ago and we've checked that the region pages are indexed properly. Is there anything we are missing? Has anyone had any success in getting Google to change its landing pages?
Local Website Optimization | | ClickHub-Harry0 -
Sub domain for geo pages
Hello Group! I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients. For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com. Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com? Is this a viable option? Will I get penalized? Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated! Thanks in Advance
Local Website Optimization | | underdogmike0 -
Onsite Optimization for 2 Locations on One Site
Hello, We have multiple client who have 2 office locations n the same state in varying counties and would like to have their site rank for two counties. Is this plausible ? For instance they would like their header tags to read "Lawyer in Middlesex & Monmouth County NJ" Rather than "Middlesex County NJ Lawyer" Would this be an effective strategy or be seen as stuffing by Google?
Local Website Optimization | | Armen-SEO0 -
What to do with localised landing pages on listings website - Canonical question
Hi Run a pet listings website and we had tonnes of duplicate content that we have resolved. But not sure what to do with the localised landing pages. We have everything pointing back back to the main listings URL http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale-stud-and-adoption/ but haven't pointed the URLs that show pets for specific towns and cities eg http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale/dogs-and-puppies/in-city-of-london/ back to the main url. Obviously this is giving us duplicate content issues, but these pages do rank in local search and drive traffic into the site. So my question is should we canonicalise the local pages back to the main url and if we do will this mean our local landing pages will no longer rank? Is there any alternatives?
Local Website Optimization | | dogscatsandpets0