One of the questions we frequently get asked is how a local business should display the main location page of their website, which becomes more important if you have multiple locations. Our advice has always been to have one page per location of your business that displays unique content about that area.

Information to put on your location page

Think about what your visitor needs to know about your business in that location so must have information includes:

  1. Your address
  2. Your telephone number
  3. Your business hours (best to use the 24 hour clock and don’t abbreviate the days, so use Monday and not Mon)
  4. Services or departments that the location provides (e.g. a supermarket may have a 24 hour pharmacy)

Nice to have information on the page includes

  1. Driving directions to the location
  2. Testimonials from happy customers
  3. The managers photo
  4. Methods of payment

You can really build out your location pages, so each one has its unique URL with unique content.

Your must have information should be marked up

The first 4 bullets listed above are the most important information about your location and as such should be marked up using Schema.org. This helps Google identify exactly whats important about that page so that it can correctly present your business for local search queries. This markup is not visible on your website pages that a visitor would view, but it is the information the Googlebots need to help identify your business. All the important information listed above can be wrapped in this code, and last month Google announced that it will support 4 types of phone number including

  • Customer service
  • Technical support
  • Billing support
  • Bill payment

Putting Schema code in is something that your webmaster can do for you quite easily, but if you want to have a go yourself then you can find some examples (that you could just copy) on this Google example page.

Getting found on Google Maps

There have been a number of reports on how to get your business found on Google Maps, but here are my thoughts as to the best way of getting your business in the number 1 spot.

  1. Of course you have to have you business verified on Google Maps (make sure its 100% complete and accurate. It needs to correspond directly to the location page on your website)
  2. Put together a strategy of getting Google reviews, the more, the better.
  3. Put together a strategy to build local citations on other websites that are relevant to your industry. (A citation is purely another website that lists your business, typically the name, address and telephone number)
  4. Put together a social strategy using your Google+ business page. Google does consider its own platform as the most important so the more +1’s you can get the better off you are on this platform.

Need help?

If you need help putting together your local business strategy, we’re only a phone call away.