Local SEO
Local landing pages
Build location pages that are genuinely about the location, and skip the ones that cannot be. It is a defined piece of work rather than a retainer line item.
Local landing pages: what it is and what it is not
Build location pages that are genuinely about the location, and skip the ones that cannot be. In practice that means deciding which locations justify a page, honestly, before writing any, and then the harder half: Local research: areas served, local conditions, local demand patterns.
Why this work exists
Skipping it is defensible for a quarter. Past that it starts costing more than doing it would have.
Local SEO holds the whole discipline. This page is one defined piece of it.
The nearest piece of work to it is putting the parking situation in writing because people ask. Where that is already handled, this moves faster than the estimate; where it is not, the two get done together or neither of them holds.
What good looks like
The working version gets updated by whoever notices, not by whoever owns it.
The gap between that and where most accounts start is why this is scoped as Local landing pages rather than as a line inside something larger. Keeping the profile posts going rather than abandoning them after a month is the usual second step once it is in place.
When this is the right work
Start here if you recognise any of these:
- Location pages differ only by the place name
- Pages exist for areas the business does not serve
- Location pages have no inbound links and no traffic
If none of those is true, something else is probably the constraint, and the Local SEO overview maps the alternatives. The usual neighbours are finding out whether the competitor’s address is a desk or a business and making the phone number on the profile ring somewhere that gets answered.
What the work covers
Concretely, this covers:
- Deciding which locations justify a page, honestly, before writing any. The output here is what everything after it is built from.
- Local research: areas served, local conditions, local demand patterns, done before anything downstream is committed to.
- Writing pages that a resident would recognise as true. Usually scoped at half the size it turns out to be.
- Internal linking between location pages, city hubs and service pages. The output here is what everything after it is built from.
How it runs
The shape of the work, stage by stage.
Writing it down for the next person
The reasoning gets recorded alongside the result, so a decision taken in March can still be defended in September by somebody who was not there.
Deciding what not to do
A list of things deliberately left alone, with the reason for each. It saves the same conversation happening four times over the following year.
The second look
A fortnight after the first pass, the same ground gets covered again with fresh eyes. The second pass finds a different class of problem from the first.
What each part runs into
What each part actually contends with:
- Deciding which locations justify a page, honestly, before writing any, where a Melbourne engagement contends with a sector mix that pulls the brief in several directions
- Local research: areas served, local conditions, local demand patterns – working in Ajmer this means accounting for a seasonal peak that arrives before the content is indexed
- Writing pages that a resident would recognise as true, and in Pune the constraint on it is a reporting line that averages away the market in question
- Internal linking between location pages, city hubs and service pages, harder in Ahmedabad because of a market where buyers qualify by area rather than by city
The error worth naming
Generating a page for every place name in the service radius. That is the doorway pattern search systems act on, and it can affect the whole domain rather than just those pages.
It is a cheap mistake to avoid and an expensive one to discover six months in.
How it is measured
Local ranking per served area, and enquiries attributed to location pages. That measure is agreed before the work starts, so there is no argument about the result afterwards.
The definition is written down once and not quietly adjusted when it becomes inconvenient.
What you end up with
What you can point at afterwards is a set of location pages with real local content, and a documented reason for every location that does not get one.
Short enough to read in a sitting, which is a deliberate constraint rather than an accident.
How it differs by sector
How the sector changes it:
- Home and trade services, where emergency intent, service-area geography, and a phone that has to be answered. which moves this work earlier in the plan.
- In B2B services the binding constraint is that a buying committee, a long cycle, and attribution that has to survive both.
- SaaS and technology: the thing that changes the scope here is that product-led companies where the buyer self-educates and the trial is the sales call.
The industry pages carry the rest of that detail. Home and trade services and B2B services are the two where this piece of work most often decides the outcome.
Common questions
How different does each location page need to be?
Different enough that a resident would recognise it as being about their area: the specific localities, the local conditions that affect the work, the travel involved, the people who cover it. A useful internal test is removing the place name and asking whether the page could be about anywhere. If it could, it is a doorway page.
Should a business create pages for areas it serves but has no office in?
Only where it genuinely serves them and has something true to say about serving them. A service-area page is legitimate; what is not is a page for a city the business has never worked in, created because the name has search volume. The distinction is whether the page is useful to somebody there.
Will we speak to the person doing the work?
Yes. The person who diagnoses Local landing pages is the person who does it and the person on the review call. Handing a finding to somebody else to execute is where most of the value leaks. Toronto is the page to read before the kickoff call; Udaipur is the one to read after it.
What happens if we stop after this?
You keep everything: A set of location pages with real local content, and a documented reason for every location that does not get one. Documented so your own team can continue it, including the parts we would have done next and why. Automotive is the reference page for this. B2B services is the one with the examples.
What if we disagree with the diagnosis?
Then we look at the data together. Local ranking per served area, and enquiries attributed to location pages is the test, and a finding that cannot survive being questioned is not a finding worth acting on. The order most people need is Marketplace Marketing first, Website Design and Development once the first one is running.
Ask about local landing pages
Tell us what you have tried already. That is usually the fastest route to a useful reply.
Find the constraint before funding the plan
Tell us what you sell and what is not working. We will come back with the two or three things we would look at before anything else.