Local SEO: thoughts on driving users to a homepage or to a local landing page?
-
I work with a client who is about to launch a local landing page for one of their locations. They're worried that the new local landing page will cannibalize some of the keyword rankings for the homepage. Any advice on how to have a local presence but still drive people to the more valuable homepage?
-
The homepage will likely always be the page on your website with highest domain authority. While there are situations where this might not be the case, the homepage is likely the be the page that has the most backlinks (don't internally and externally). That being said, I don't think creating local landing pages for multiple locations would harm the keyword rankings for your homepage. Instead, this provides an opportunity for your client to dominate the search engine results pages and take up more than one of the listings.
As they build out these localized pages, I would spend time focusing on both the geo-targeted keywords, but also building authority for these pages. Are there any local organizations, associations, teams, etc. that would link back to the localized service page?
As Julie said, your homepage is going to do the most work for you. But utilize these landing pages to enhance the results!
-
Some people expect their home page to work too hard, to be all things to all people. Get everything you can with your home page, and use the landing page to get even more.
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
-
How to Rank Local Website in Search Engines?
Hello, I'm the owner of a rubbish removal company based in London - Frank Rubbish Removal and trying to optimize the website of the company for search engines. Until now, I have hired a couple marketing companies but without success. What I want to achieve is to rank for local keywords in the rubbish removal niche, for example, Rubbish Removal Chelsea, waste clearance Hackney, waste removal Harrow...and similar local keywords. I have spent a lot of money on marketing companies and the website still can't go on 1st page of search engines in the UK. Can you tell me what I can do or who can hire to bring my website on 1st page for the local keywords?
Local Website Optimization | | korado112 -
What is the best way to display local landing pages in the site nav?
My client has multiple local landing pages and it looks a bit spammy opening up the top nav of e.g."Plumbers" to a long list of "plumbers Melbourne", "plumbers Knoxfield", "plumbers Wantirna" etc etc What is the best way of incorporating local landing pages into the site's overall architecture? Thank you.
Local Website Optimization | | Crystal.w0 -
Company with different branches: Generic Keywords & Localized Keywords: Best practise?
INITIAL SITUATION: We offer a branded product/service in different cities. We have different contact pages for every city (—> basically just a form and a map, i.e. 100% SHALLOW). GOAL:
Local Website Optimization | | Cesare.Marchetti
We would like to rank for the branded keyword only (—> more generic search intent) but as well as for branded keyword + cities (—> more transactional search intent) combinations. REMARK: It would make little sense in my opinion to develop the individual contact pages (for every city) to „full“ pages with real content as there isn’t really specific content for the differenct cities to add. OPTIONS:
1) HOME page: target for the branded keyword CONTACT pages (one for each city): target for the branded keyword + city name HOME page: target for the branded keyword + all the city names CONTACT pages (one for each city): : NO keyword targeting at all HOME page: target for the branded keyword + different city names CONTACT pages (one for each city): target for the branded keyword + city name Add CANONICAL tag to main page ???!!!??? What is best practise? What would you recommend? Is there another solution? I really would like to know your opinion. Thanks a lot for your hints in advance.
Cheers,
CesareBearbeiten0 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Multi Location SEO Page Structure
I am trying to optimize my website for multiple locations. I have setup a landing page for each location. Now I want to optimize services we offer at those locations such as floor scrubber rentals. I'm confused on the best approach for this for ranking locally. I offer the same equipment for rent at each location. So... should I have a link on the location landing page that takes you to an individual floor scrubber rental page for each location optimized for that locations city or should I have just one floor scrubber rental page and would I optimize it for both cities or just optimize it for floor scrubber rentals in general? I have many different categories like this that are offered @ both locations. If I do individual pages all the products and rates will be duplicate but I could change the areas we deliver to and description to be more geared towards that city.
Local Website Optimization | | CougarChemMike0 -
What is the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Do I really have to update the subtype if there isn't a suitable alternative?
Could someone please elaborate on the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Does it even matter? The Local business properties section of developers.google.com says to: Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type. Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on. Unfortunately, the ProfessionalService page of schema.org states that ProfessionalService has been deprecated and many of my clients don't fit anywhere else (or if they do it's not a LocalBusiness subtype). I find it inconvenient to have to modify my different clients' JSON-LD from LocalBusiness to ProfessionalService back to LocalBusiness. I'm not saying this happens every day but how does one keep up with it all? I'm really trying to take advantage of the numerous types, attributes, etc., in structured data but I feel the more I implement, the harder it will be to update later (true of many things, of course). I do feel this is important and that a better workflow could be the answer. If you have something that works for you, please let us know. If you think it's not important tell us why not? (Why Google is wrong) I understand there is always a better use of our time, but I'd like to limit the discussion to solving this Google/Schema.org deprecation issue specifically.
Local Website Optimization | | bulletproofsearch0 -
Pages ranking outside of sales area
Hi there Moz Community, I work with a client (a car dealership), that mostly serves an area within 50-100 miles at most from their location. A previous SEO company had built a bunch of comparison pages on their website (i.e. 2016 Acura ILX vs. Mercedes-Benz C300). These pages perform well in their backyard in terms of engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, etc. However, they pull in traffic from all over the country and other countries as well. Because they really don't have much of an opportunity to sell someone a car across the country that a customer could easily buy at their local dealership, anyone from outside their primary marketing area typically bounces. So, it drags down their overall site metrics plus all of the metrics for these pages. I imagine searchers from outside their primary sales area are seeing their location and saying "whoah that's far and not what I'm looking for." I tried localizing the pages by putting their city name in the title tags, meta descriptions, and content, but that doesn't seem to really be getting rid of this traffic from areas too far away to sell a car to. My worry is that the high bounce rates, low time on site, and general irrelevancy of these pages to someone far away are going to affect them negatively. So, short of trying to localize the content on the page or just deleting these pages all together, I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Do you think that having these high bouncing pages will hurt them? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Make_Model1 -
2 Relevant local websites but closing one and redirecting it to an older site
We have 2 websites, 1 domain is about 10 years old and another is about 4 years old, the 4 yr old domain we are thinking of shutting down since its the same type of service we run but it was a 'keyword domain' that used to rank on 1st page but now its 4th page back. If we put the blog posts and other content + setup re-directs from the 4yr old domain to the 10 yr old domain, would this help the 10 yr old domain with more link juice that it might need for the extra boost? There isnt really any point having both websites up since both are about the same content and targeting the same local market.
Local Website Optimization | | surfsup0