Whether you’ve got two locations or 2,000, local web content is crucial for your business’s online marketing success. Google’s Pigeon algorithm, a local search filter, is there to help you succeed — but only if you build your local marketing content strategy the right way. You can’t hope to cut through the noise without a great content strategy for local SEO. But is your business doing everything it can to capture the local market? That’s today’s topic.

Landing Pages, Subpages, and More

A local SEO and content marketing strategy starts with localized pages, naturally. For any business that has more than one location, that means having a distinct online landing page for each.

But slapping a different header on a dozen cookie-cutter landing pages for a dozen different markets isn’t enough. Per Matt Cutts, a leading search team member at Google, duplicate local landing pages — where all that changes is the city, state, address, etc. — is not good enough for proper SEO.

To please Google, you should put more effort into the content of each of your localized pages. This makes sense if you think about it. Marketing content for Flat Rock, Michigan should be distinct from that of Mesa, Arizona. Images, franchise information, maps, services, and more, should all be distinct.

More than differing landing pages, the important strategy for creating truly local SEO and content marketing is to add localized secondary web pages. On these supplementary pages, your localized online storefronts can stand out with staff info, local reviews and testimonials, geographically relevant FAQs, and more.

Different Is Required, Distinct Is Better

So yes, as far as SEO best practices go, you must make your landing pages for each of your markets different. But an even better strategy is to make your localized pages distinct.

If you’re a fan of Apple, and you travel, you may have noticed that Apple’s Fifth Avenue shop in Midtown Manhattan is monumentally distinct from the Union Square shop in San Francisco and the Paris Opéra district’s boutique. Sure, each is a mix of glass, glossy white interiors, and minimalist lighting, but that mixture is reinterpreted for each distinct market.

Think of your localized content strategy in the same way. There are certain unifying features of your web presence — your graphics, colors, fonts, style, vision, and value proposition — but for each local web page, adapt those foundational principles to suit your ideal customer in your local market.

Submarkets Are Sales Opportunities

Even within a single metro area, there’s an opportunity to create distinct, hyper-local pages to drive more sales growth. These submarket web pages could help you pursue a multi-faceted sales and content marketing approach.

Thinking of our own home here in the Detroit metro, customers in Flat Rock, Troy, and Midtown, are all likely to have distinct needs and buying triggers. That’s especially true for any business that sells professional services, but also holds true for other industries.

This holds true for Apple, which designed two other Manhattan storefronts differently than the Fifth Avenue store despite the fact that all three are within walking distance of one another.

Local Content Drives Local Commerce

You can help your online presence reach more local customers with a content strategy for local SEO. Do not cut corners with a carbon-copy approach; build web presences that engage human audiences while pleasing nonhuman algorithms.

Want help with localized content and SEO for each of your business locations? Call us at 313-338-9515 or email hello@kaleidico.com to learn how Kaleidico’s full-service digital marketing agency can help you reach your goals with professional local SEO services, web design, and content marketing.