How to use service area pages to boost local SEO

Does your business have a physical location or serve a particular geographic area?

Local SEO is one of the most powerful search engine optimisation strategies available, helping your business to be more visible in local search results on Google.

Many corporations use the free Google My Business (GMB) tool. This provides the key information about your company to anyone who searches your company name or terms that are relevant to your business or location. Your GMB listing will give prospects everything they need to find your location, visit your website, or contact you by phone.

However, if there is a lot of competition in your area, you’re in a heavily saturated industry, or you’re between two cities, getting noticed can be much harder.
The good news is that service area pages can address such challenges, giving your SEO a much-needed boost.

Read on to find out more about service area pages, including what they are, how they help to improve local SEO, and how they should be written.

What are service area pages?

Service area pages for SEO combine content marketing strategies with landing pages.

Depending on the user’s search query, they may reach your service area page before your homepage – providing them with the information they require in just a few clicks.

It’s good practice to create a service area page for each town or city you want to target. The more pages you have on your website (all featuring unique content!), the greater the SEO boost – attracting customers from various nearby locations.

How can service area pages improve local SEO?

With Google’s local search algorithms constantly evolving, creating area pages for the main services your business provides is a brilliant way to capture localised traffic, and ultimately, generate leads.

A service area page that is carefully created, well-written, and optimised for the town or city in question is likely to gain traction in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), contributing to an overall increase in your Google rankings.

When producing content for such pages, you’ll need to do some keyword research for each specific area. This is because a common industry-specific keyword or phrase in one area may not be as popular in a neighbouring city or town.

Incorporating exact-match and long-tailed keywords, where possible, will help you to achieve even better results – making your page more visible to users than your competitors.

What should service area pages include?

Since service area pages may take the place of your homepage, it pays to know how to write them effectively.

When it comes to writing service area pages, you need to make sure that the content is not only informative, but engaging and unique, too. The last thing you should do is duplicate the text from one page and simply swap the area name!

Be clear on what your business does and how customers could benefit. Tailor your content to the local audience’s needs and interests – and take the opportunity to show off your local knowledge!

Use relevant keywords for the service and area you’re targeting (i.e. Digital Marketing Agency in St Helens), but avoid keyword stuffing. This is an SEO tactic that involves forcing keywords into web pages where they don’t fit naturally. Check out our blog ‘The dangers of keyword stuffing’ to find out more about this.

Ideally, these area pages should follow a similar structure to your main service pages and provide the same user experience. As a rule of thumb, each one should include a call-to-action (CTA) to prompt users to make a purchase, sign up for a service, or learn more.

Incorporating client reviews and case studies will give users an insight into what they can expect from your company whilst also demonstrating your expertise.
It’s also worth adding internal links to and from your homepage and related service pages to increase traffic.

Boost your local SEO with Paramount Digital

Want to enhance your local SEO and increase your visibility?

Paramount Digital’s SEO experts have helped hundreds of clients improve their online presence by implementing a host of local SEO techniques. One such method is creating service area pages and targeting relevant keywords within these to help boost your local SEO.

In addition to this, we can optimise your GMB profile to ensure users have access to the most up-to-date info.

To find out more about our local SEO services and how we can help increase your organic rankings, get in touch today.

Either call us on 01744 74 74 74 or drop us an email at marketing@paramountdigital.co.uk, and we’ll get back to you with more information as soon as possible.