Local Search for Multiple Locations

[PurpleGriffon]

Hi Folks,

The company I work for is based in Kendal in Cumbria in the United Kingdom (that's our head office) but as we are a training company and we have training locations all over the UK, how would I go about updating the local listings to reflect this. I'd like to specifically target our London based venues.

Any help much appreciated.

Gaz

[Trespass]

Hi Gaz,

As the local search results are based on "local businesses" it's important to have a physical presence in that area like an office, or a virtual office.

In the past I've used a virtual office with a forwarding service and it still works. The important thing is you have a presence in that city, have good quality citations, and real reviews.

Kind regards

Robert

[artdivision]

Hey Gaz,

One way to do this is make location based landing pages based on the keywords you are optimising for. Let me give you a rough example. Lets say you target people who are looking for social media training and you have offices in London, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

Assuming you optimise your web site for a keyword such as Social Media Training UK you can then create footer pages which lead to landing pages for keywords: social media training cardiff, social media training london, social media training liverpool etc.

Each of these pages should be optimised separately, try to avoid copying the same page and just change the location on the content, title, H1. I am sure that each location has different trends, price ranges, competition etc.

Keyword planner (while atm to me is nowhere near keyword tool) can provide you very specific location based keywords (you can use post codes and google maps to target the area) and give you an idea of what people are looking for within the areas you are targeting.

Don;t forget long tail keywords which can also be used as intelligence/insights for local trends. You can then use these keywords to create engaging content.

Hope these are some good starting pointers.

[PurpleGriffon]

Hi Nelly,

Thanks for taking the time to answer, and while your response is good advice for creating localised landing pages and optimising them for search, my question was specifically about local search results in Google, as in the local listings.

Thanks

[PurpleGriffon]

Hi Trespass,

Thanks for your response.

As I mention above, we do have a physical presence in the locations we are targeting. So, to further clarify my question, how would you go about getting these in to your local listing? Would I need to create separate listings for each location?

Cheers

Gaz

[artdivision]

yes I realised it a bit later, not a good idea to respond on Q&A in the morning

Trespass pretty much sum it up for me in terms of local searches, hope it helps!

[PurpleGriffon]

No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

[Trespass]

Hi Gaz,

yes you would need a seperate listing for each location. We have 136 of them lol

Each has its own landing page (only updated since i joined trespass 2months ago) as all listings pointed to the home page. Now each listing points to a landing page/store info page.

Robert

[PurpleGriffon]

Brilliant. Pretty much what I had expected, so thanks for clarifying that for me Trespass. I'll get to work.

[Trespass]

No probs,

You can use the bulk uploader if you have a lot of locations likw we do.

If you need any other info on setting up your listing, golden nuggets etc give me a shout.

Robert

[PurpleGriffon]

Cheers. I'd love some of your 'golden nuggets' please!