SEO, Location Pages and You: A How-To Guide

Posted on October 16, 2025 in Blog

Holding a high search engine results page (SERP) position for each unique location improves the brand’s visibility within the service area or market. Local landing pages allow brands to connect more personally with their audience. In this piece, we’ll run through how to organize and make local SEO landing pages and provide a road map to get it done efficiently.

What Is a Location Page?

Location pages target local keyword variations to capture organic search traffic within the specific location’s geographic area. This content is the bedrock of local SEO, and while it’s alternatively referred to as a local page, service area page, geo page, or city page, it typically serves one or two purposes.

They act as a local business landing page or a sort of localized homepage, within a brand’s larger domain. This also includes additional cities served by that local business, franchisee, or office.
They act as a local service or product page, targeting service or product keywords with localized keywords (think “digital marketing agency in Traverse City” as an example).

An example of a URL for a local landing page helps clarify this example.

For Hot Air Guitars, our fake (for now) hot air guitar lesson franchise, the local homepage includes localized keywords that are also targeted on the national homepage. At the same time, the page itself is organized within its own subfolder.

National domain: https://www.hotairguitars.com/
Local landing page: https://www.hotairguitars.com/lees-summit/
Local geo page (city page): https://www.hotairguitars.com/lees-summit/blue-valley/
Local service page: https://www.hotairguitars.com/lees-summit/lessons/stage-dives/

Why You Need Local Business Landing Pages

Remember that one of the most important (and yet overlooked) components of SEO is relevancy. Many brands chase high-volume, short-tail keywords that drive vanity metrics (tens of thousands of organic sessions, millions of SERP impressions) but don’t consistently generate quality site traffic or conversions.

Location-based SEO is all about relevancy, and that requires two actions when crafting location pages:

Local keywords are more relevant (and valuable)
Localized content that is unique

Landing page localization requires creating unique content for each location. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. Franchise businesses or individual owners with multiple locations or service areas often need a bit of extra muscle and our SEO and content team can do the heavy lifting for you.

Read the Case Study: Local SEO for an HVAC Franchise Location

How to Create Content for Local Landing Pages

For SEO to drive real results, local landing page design and optimization need to clearly define a market or service area by targeting local keywords. Additionally, the best local landing pages are truly unique, not just repurposed national pages with local keywords slotted into headers.

Let’s get into those two priorities in more detail.

1. Target local keywords.

Let’s say your business provides expert air guitar lessons in several communities in Michigan. Each location services a primary city and a mix of nearby neighborhoods or suburbs, most of which have at least a few eager, aspiring air guitarists.

Localizing these pages will pair existing keyword targets held by the domain and a modifier, which is just a fancy way of saying, “Insert city name.” Make sure you focus on branded keywords on the homepage and localized non-branded keywords on local landing pages. Here are a few examples of national and local keywords our thriving fake (for now) air guitar lesson company is targeting.

National keyword	Local keyword
hot air guitar lessons (branded)	hot air guitar lessons of Detroit (branded)
air guitar lessons	air guitar lessons in detroit
left-handed air guitar lessons	left handed air guitar lessons detroit
air guitar tutors	detroit air guitar tutors
air guitar repair	air guitar repair southfield (nearby service area)

You can find the keyword volume, difficulty, and traffic value of national and local keywords using tools like Semrush or Moz, although Google Trends is a very useful (and free) tool to get you started!

Aside from keywords, some on-page information is an immediate differentiator for both Google and users: contact information! Sometimes called “NAP information,” for name, address, phone number, your digits and address prove a specific location is doing its own thing.

2. Make it local and unique.

Many franchise or multilocation websites are built using CMS platforms that automatically localize service areas of city pages. The platforms use content elements called macros to play a very organized (and unfun) version of Mad Libs, filling in local information on location pages. For example, a city page might be…

Hot Air Guitars of {City}

…wherein the {City} is automatically updated to that franchise location.

That’s a start, but it’s often not enough to make each page truly unique. While information from Google is fuzzy, most industry experts believe a page’s content should be 40-60% unique to avoid duplicate content penalties. Google and other search engines don’t like websites that use the same copy and the same metadata on multiple pages.

Website location pages for franchises are common duplicate content culprits – but they don’t have to be. Encourage franchise owners (or your favorite local SEO experts) to think bigger than macros and try:

Varying the page copy (rewriting content)
Introducing localized keywords naturally into the copy
Mentioning and even linking to local organizations, landmarks, events, or resources
Using local terminology, if possible

A local homepage optimization project can dramatically improve franchise visibility, drive conversions, and highlight region-specific opportunities that inform blog concepts and paid media efforts.

The Anatomy of a Local Landing Page

There is a wide range of necessary and nice-to-have components for your location-based content, but our local SEO team has found a few common characteristics of top-performing homepages. In countless location page examples, we’ve found that they contain:

No more than 800 words (crazy, right?)
No more than 7 headers
Location-specific reviews (usually above the fold, near the top of the page)
No more than 5 calls-to-action, or CTAs (in some industries, fewer!)
A video explaining the service
An offer or incentive section (usually a coupon or rebate)

Again, it’s important to emphasize that some specific services or industries vary widely on these characteristics, and there are many factors to consider, such as the number of localized services pages and how users are intended to convert. We conduct rigorous market and competitor research to make informed recommendations in designing and optimizing local pages, so your brand meets or exceeds industry best practices. As a part of that process, we’ll show you location page examples, customized templates and mock-ups, and a detailed game plan to make it happen!

One Last Note About Location Pages…

SEO is never done. Just as search engines tweak (or overhaul) their algorithms, customers change how they search and what they expect from search results. Make localized, geographical SEO part of your brand’s long-term strategy to catch and capitalize on new search trends, including voice, image, and artificial intelligence. What works now may not work tomorrow, and no brand can afford to get left behind.

Get Local, Everywhere You Are

Local SEO is our thing. Oneupweb works with national franchise brands representing thousands of individual locations across the US and Canada in diverse industries. Whether it’s a growing plumbing franchise or an up-and-coming restaurant chain, our integrated teams have the experience to drive real results, real quick. Let’s talk about it; get in touch or call (231) 922-9977 today to get started!