Local landing pages need to be strong — as strong as Vibranium, the (supposedly) fictional element behind much of Wakanda’s thriving — but most local landing pages are about as strong as Tin, which is to say: they’re weak. Too text-heavy or too text-light, they rarely display trust signals like reviews, so visitors to the landing page feel uncertain and don’t follow through and convert.
Ideally, your landing page will do the following:
- Build trust
- Build interest
- Begin the conversion process
After all, If someone is ready to click on a GMB listing to get to a website or landing page, they’re pretty close to converting and becoming a lead for someone. Be that someone! If you’re a business with a GMB listing, it’s time to put your best foot forward and create landing pages that convert.
Common Landing Page Problems
Not all landing pages are alike, but bad landing pages tend to share some of the same problems.
- Low Visibility. This problem arises when you build a landing page, but no one can find it to land on it.
- Low Conversion Rate. This problem arises when you get plenty of traffic to your landing page, but that traffic doesn’t convert.
We’ll tackle each of these problems together by getting the basics right, so you can create landing pages that actually convert.
Get the Basics Right: Unique Content and UVPs
To build a good landing page, you need to start with the basics: Unique Content with Unique Value Propositions (UVPs). I know, I know. You hear it all the time — unique content and UVPs that actually speak to potential customers’ pain points will convert. When it comes to local landing pages, though, few follow these basic guidelines.
Here are some questions to help you develop a solid UVP (or multiple solid UVPs).
- What does your customer need and care about?
- What do you do really well?
- Why should customers choose you over your competitors?
Unique content seems like a no-brainer, but really, it only hints at what your copy needs to contain and convey. The content on your location landing page shouldn’t just be unique, it should be compelling. Why should someone choose you over your competitors?
Get the Basics Right: Local Information
Location landing pages need to include mentions of the key local information, including:
- Name
- Address
- Phone Number
- Hours of Operation
- Local Schema
- City and Street in Headers
Get the Basics Right: Site Navigation & URL Structure
To help with low visibility, be sure the main menu of your website includes a menu option for Locations or Areas Served. This menu section should dropdown into links for each location page.
Be logical in your site navigation and include some location information in the URL.
- Domain.com/location/state/city
- Domain.com/areas-served/city
- Domain.com/locations/city/street
Get the Basics Right: Technical SEO
Technical SEO and on-page SEO forms an important part of the basics that will help ensure your location landing page is as strong as Vibranium, too. What does that mean? Make sure you have good meta titles and descriptions, that you’ve included alt text with all your images so they’re accessible, and that copy on every page of your website includes meaningful header tags.
But don’t stop there. If your local landing page is not mobile-friendly, fast, and indexable, nothing else matters — especially if your main problem is low visibility. In other words, even if your content and UVPs are spot on, no one will be able to find you to read them. Online tools that can help you measure and address these elements include:
Getting basic elements is essential, but it still isn’t enough to convert visitors to leads on your location landing pages. Location Landing pages are like PPC landing pages, they require all the conversion elements coupled with a local content focus. Make your location landing page Vibranium strong by improving them further.
Beyond Basics: Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
You can’t turn a site visitor into a lead without calls-to-action and conversion opportunities. What is a call-to-action? That part of your landing page copy where you tell visitors to your page what it is you want them to do. Your CTA could be your phone number displayed at the top of the page, a contact from in the middle of the page, or a section at the bottom of the page reminding users why they should choose you and what to do next.
Be sure to provide a conversion opportunity above the fold that’s also near reviews or testimonials so its impact is as effective as possible.
Beyond Basics: Trust & Reputation Factors
People tend to only want to do business with people or companies that they trust. How do you earn people’s trust online? It starts with making sure people know about your business and services by getting the basics right so they can find you online. But getting people to know about your business is the easy part. Getting them to like you and trust you takes more work.
Here’s what can help turn knowledge into trust.
Awards and Accolades
Awards and accolades are some of the best trust signals that a company can receive — especially if they are industry-specific recognitions.
Industry-specific proof indicates that your business is well-respected by others in the same field, and it signals to visitors on your page that you’re leading the competition.
Online Ratings
Adding online reviews and ratings from trusted sites will add social proof. If you add the ability to submit reviews, you will also be able to add aggregate rating schema to the page so that your ratings will show in search results.
Reviews & Testimonials
Customer reviews and testimonials are considered an extremely important factor for converting PPC landing pages and translate over to location landing pages very well. Amp up your reviews and testimonials by showing the value (when possible) that your company brought to that client.
Pages can see as much as a 33% improvement in conversion just by adding reviews.
Build Confidence
No one likes to buy a product or service they still have unanswered questions about. Providing evidence of the value of your product or service helps instill confidence in visitors. This can be done through:
- Videos of the process
- Before and after photos
- Photo galleries
Give customers all the information they need to make a buying decision on your local landing page.
Putting the Basics and Beyond Into Action
There are very few companies that are actually incorporating all these elements as part of their strategy for local landing pages, which means if you do it for your business, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition. This works! I use these elements as a guideline for location landing pages for all of my clients with consistent results. These are the organic sessions for a client’s location landing pages. The client started working with me in August 2019.
Now that you have all the conditions for Vibranium strong location landing pages, go test, test, and test again. You won’t know what works best for your business unless you try and test.
If you have any questions about location landing pages that convert or other local SEO conundrums, find me on Twitter. If you need local SEO, technical SEO or other search engine optimization services from an award-winning SEO agency, reach out to LOCOMOTIVE Agency today.
