Do location pages boost the homepage?

[OliverNeely]

Google has stated that businesses should spend time creating location pages for the various service areas that businesses operate in.  What I want to know is, it is equally about boosting the relevance of the site as a whole, as well as ranking that individual page in the local area.  Does Google take into account the fact that you have the location page and reward the homepage by favoring it more in that local area, or is it simply about ranking an individual page in each town/city?

[VeroBrain]

Hi John,

Good question. Local website optimisation is part of a whole. If LWO is done properly and there is consistency of the NAP all over the internet, as well as by having good reviews. Therefore, it will attract more visitors and as a good secondary effect, the website performance in SERPs - if it is technically correct, no Penguin nor UX issues, - yes it might help to boost the rank of the homepage. Although, you might should consider to optimise the homepage as well. The best guide by Miriam Ellis.

Mª Verónica B.

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for the kind mention of that article, Ma Veronica B.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi John!

This is a good question. I highly, highly recommend watching Rand's Whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

This does a better job than I can, in a few sentences, to explain how an individual page of your website relates to your overall brand. I think this is where your thoughts are going with this. Please, watch the video and come back with further questions.

In the meantime, what I'll say is that what you are actually trying to do is to build topical authority. So, if your business is a landscaping company serving the San Francisco Bay Area, all of those individual topical pages you are building to represent your service areas (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc.) go toward building your overall authority. And, too, of course you can build internal links from your location landing pages to your homepage, if appropriate, but that may not always be the case.

Hope the video helps!