Your web pages may be aesthetically pleasing, have compelling calls to action, and effectively communicate your services. However, if they aren’t properly optimized for search engines, you risk not being seen by potential customers. This holds true to your brand’s individual location pages, which are often overlooked in content strategy yet hold the same weight in terms of importance in being visible.
Content marketing plays a key role in your website’s ability to be seen any time a searcher is seeking your product or service. A solid content marketing strategy coupled with an experienced team in place can lead your local landing pages to success, achieving those highly-coveted top search results placement. But what should your local content strategy entail to skyrocket your search ranking and gain more eyes on your brand?
In this blog, we will share our top 5 on-page content marketing strategies to help your business optimize your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
1. Differentiate Your Content
Stale, recycled content won’t win you points in search engines’ algorithms. Instead, top search platforms like Google will deem your content as duplicate content and penalize you through your search ranking. Yet, many brands, both large and small, make the mistake of using the same content across all their locations. To stand out in search and improve the SEO value of your web pages, we recommend adding unique and differentiated content. This not only improves the quality of content on your page but also adds value for the reader.
As a Google report states, “the most basic signal that information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as your search query.” Think from a local searcher’s perspective about what they would be looking for and surface that information on your web page.
A few ways you can incorporate differentiated copy to your local pages include adding copy about:
- Cross streets or neighborhood-specific information
- Current promotions relevant to the location
- Landmarks or points of interest nearby
- Any unique services or offerings at the location
- Hours of operation, address, and phone number for the location
2. Add Unique Images
Adding unique images to your local pages gives the viewer more context to the information you’re trying to convey. It is also more visually appealing, helps break up your text, and makes the information on the page easier to digest. However, not all images are created equal.
Any images you add to your web page should be high-quality, an appropriate size to ensure it doesn’t slow down your page speed, and relevant to the page copy. Ensure your images include a descriptive title relevant to the image and alt text to describe the image to visitors who are unable to see them.
3. Incorporate Crucial SEO Elements
There are various SEO elements you should incorporate into each of your web pages to ensure they’re properly optimized. The first is your focus keyword, which should appear sporadically throughout your copy in a natural manner. Your focus keyword should be the word or a few words that are most relevant to what a searcher would be looking for when landing on the page.
Each of your pages should also have a meta description. A meta description is a short synopsis of what visitors can expect to read when they arrive on the page. A searcher may also see your meta description in the search results when the searched for phrase is in the description.
Other SEO elements to take into consideration include:
- Optimize title and description tags
- User experience signals
- Page loading speed
- Use both inbound and outbound links (when appropriate)
- Keep your URLs short
- Include your focus keyword in your URL
- Keep your paragraphs short and content concise
4. Leverage Schema Strategies
Schema markup impacts search results and helps search engines surface information relevant to a searcher’s query. However, your business must have a strong local SEO strategy in place and proper implementation of structured data to stand out in search. Structured data also enables your brand to:
- Achieve featured snippets
- Showcase a Knowledge Graph card featuring your business name, address, phone number, description, hours, and more when they search for your brand name
- Obtain the zero position in Google Search Engine Results Page
- Appear for voice queries
For advanced schema strategies and best practices, read more here.
5. Create Quality Content
Above all else, the content you produce should be high quality and something you’re proud to publish. This is perhaps the best way to have your content stand out from your competition and boost the time visitors spend on the page. Rather than overstuffing your content with keywords we recommend:
- Make your writing easy to read. Use short sentences, break up long paragraphs, and use common words and phrases.
- Incorporate graphics. Add graphics, screenshots, or videos that are relevant to the content.
- Add quotes and statistics where applicable. To help bolster the validity of your content, add quotes from expert sources or statistics where applicable.
- Add headlines. Headlines help improve your on-page SEO. Break up your content through the use of headlines and subheadlines.
- Satisfy the searcher’s intent. Your focus keyword should align with the copy on your web page to help drive engagement. Don’t bait and switch your searchers with irrelevant content.
On-page SEO is critical for discovery and driving conversions. This can largely be accomplished through your content marketing efforts as well as staying on top of industry updates and best practices. Keep up with evolving trends, manage each of your location’s web pages to the best of your ability, and prepare for the upcoming Google ranking algorithm update, which will go into effect in May 2021.
Author Bio
Chelsea Alves is a Content Marketing Specialist at Rio SEO, with expertise in digital marketing, creative writing, and content strategy.LinkedIn
Hazel Raoult is the Marketing Manager at PRmention, a digital PR agency for SaaS and Tech Businesses.