Local SEO City Landing Pages: How to Rank in Surrounding Cities [2024]

Local City Pages SEO: How to Rank in Surrounding Cities With One Website

Are you struggling to rank your business outside of your area?

For a local business, ranking in Google's Map 3-Pack is the holy grail goal of Local SEO. However, if you've tried, you know it's nearly impossible to rank your business in the 3-pack map results for locations or cities that are outside of your immediate geographic area. So, what are your options? While you could go the route of literally opening a new physical location in the geographic area in which you want to rank, that's not usually an option for most businesses. Local SEO City Landing Pages are the next best option, giving you the opportunity to rank in the organic results for a service+city keyword search (i.e. "web design Alpharetta").

In this article, we explore this proven local SEO technique (also sometimes referred to as 'Local Landing Pages' or 'Location Pages') that allows you to elevate the visibility of your business website in surrounding areas by targeting organic search engine results as opposed to the map results.

What are Local City Pages?

(aka Location Pages, Local Landing Pages, Geo Pages, City Pages, Local City SEO)

Local City Pages are pages on your website that are optimized for a product or service in a specific geographic market, often a city. When optimizing to rank in multiple locations, City Pages are a powerful way to reach new customers from cities and areas surrounding you main location. City pages are how to appear in multiple city searches with one website.

How to rank in the map for a city if you don't have a location?

Ranking in the Google Map "3-pack" without a physical location can be challenging, but it's not impossible depending on the competition. Google determines local ranking based on relevance, distance, and prominence.

However, in most cases, it's difficult to rank in the map for cities in which you are not located unless there is weak competition. This is why we recommend trying the Local City Landing Pages technique.

How do Local City Pages Work for SEO?

The Problem: Google will not show your business in the map results for a city if you are not geographically close to that city.

When your business address is in one city, it can be difficult (pretty much impossible) to rank in the Local 3-Pack in other cities. It makes sense that Google wants 'local' map results to be, well....local. But for Service Area Businesses (SABs), it's not unusual to serve businesses an hour or more away.

Why Can't My GBP Rank Outside of My Area in Google Maps?

Because your business address is not geographically the closest to those other cities.

Google wants to return the most relevant results to users, and when they are looking for a business "near them", Google takes that seriously.

Having a well-optimized Google Business Profile page with lots of reviews will help you move up the ranks in the 3-Pack, but if your field has any competition at all, it is extremely unlikely that your business will appear in the 3-Pack map results for a city where you have no physical location.

What to do instead: Target Local Organic Search with City Landing Pages

Local City SEO

If you want to rank in a particular city, the best thing you can do to is to actually have a physical location in that city, but barring that, the next-best thing to do is to target the organic search results for target cities by creating City Landing Pages.

This tactic is well-suited to a "Service Area Business" who has an address in one city, but serves clients in many of the surrounding cities.

This helps get your website into the organic search results for a local search. It's not as great as being in the 3-Pack map results, but it does gain exposure for your business in that market.

How to Write Local Landing Pages to Rank in Multiple Cities

Optimize 1 Unique High Quality Page for Each City or Market

Optimize a unique/high quality page for each city or market in your service area to increase the likelihood of ranking in organic results for your search terms in that city.

These city landing pages are tricky and need to be written so that they contain information relevant to that city. I really can't stress this enough.....City landing pages with thin or duplicate content for each city can actually penalize your site, so the general consensus is that some thought needs to be put into these pages. (See some city pages examples we've done for clients here »)

The Content Can be Similar, Just Make Sure It's Not THIN

However, depending on your niche and competition, according to this article from Sterling Sky, you may not have to work that hard on making the pages unique from one another. The article cites a client whose city pages all rank well while not being all that different. They even demonstrate how they use ChatGPT to remix the content from one city page to create content for another, a useful tool when creating local city landing pages.

Refrain from Targeting Too Many Cities

There may be a lot of cities you want to target, but I recommend starting with the most important. Spreading it out over time will be easier on the budget and have the added benefit of demonstrating activity on the website over some time...growing the site and providing more useful content. The consensus is that targeting 100's or 1000's of cities would probably be seen as too much and spammy.

Ideas for Unique Local Content to Include on a City Landing Page

If you are wondering what types of content should be included on a local landing page, you can check out some examples of local city landing pages we've built for clients in the past. Additionally, here are some ideas for inspiration on what might be included on a city landing page (some of these are courtesy of Moz's Landing Pages Guide:

• Showcase completed projects or events in each city, using text and photos.
• Publish customer testimonials from customers in each city, encoded in Schema review structured data markup. (See also: How Structured Data Helps in Search Rankings)
• Offer city-specific specials or coupons on the city page.
• Share advice and news regarding laws, codes, weather, terrain or issues that are important to a specific community and relevant to your industry.
• Provide unique do-it-yourself tips for things customers can do on their own.
• Share details of your involvement in specific cities, such as events you participate in or organizations you sponsor.
• Embed a Google map of the city location or other custom map
• If you are a member of the Chamber of Commerce for that area, include the logo and link to it.
• Link to other local organizations or related Meetups in which you participate in the target city.
• Include images from the specific city. Sometimes you can find these in the public domain if you don't have your own images.
• Create a custom Google MyMap that shows locations that might be relevant to your reader. (Example: A business with a city page targeting 'French bulldog puppies in Tampa' creates and includes a custom map of Tampa area dog parks.)
• Mention local landmarks in your copy (Here is an example for an IT business targeting Dawsonville GA.... "From the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, to historic downtown, to the North Georgia Premium Outlets, we’ve got all of Dawsonville’s technology needs covered.")

More City Landing Pages Best Practices

• Include the city pages in the main navigation. We often set up a 'Service Area' page or menu item and then list the city pages as sub menu items under that. If you don't include the city pages in your main site navigation, you risk Google perceiving them as 'doorway pages' which can negatively impact your site. (See How do you change menu navigation in WordPress?)
• Avoid putting a giant block of text anywhere on your website listing a lot of cities or zip codes. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as a spammy practice.

What NOT to Do with your City Pages SEO

• Don't "keyword stuff" it full of the city name.
• Don't use an identical layout or verbiage on every city page.
• Don't target too many cities! Try to keep it to no more than 15-20 important cities. It becomes unrealistic to rank 'locally' for too many locations if you have no physical presence beyond your home base. However, Google's John Mueller recently indicated that having up to 50 'state' location pages might not be problematic for Google's spam filters, so their may be some wiggle room there.
• Don't target more than one location from a page.

Creating unique and high-quality city pages for each of your locations is not easy and takes some thoughtful effort. It can definitely be worth the effort when a highly targeted page begins getting you exposure in the market you are targeting.

Are Local SEO City Landing Pages Good for SABs (Service Area Businesses)?

Yes, the Local Landing Page SEO or City Pages SEO technique is perfect for SAB's, but it is also effective for businesses with more than one location who want to rank in cities where they have no physical presence.

What's considered a 'Service Area Business' by Google?

Pure Service Area Business vs. Hybrid

In the cases where your Google Business Profile address is not one that customers can visit (usually a residential address), then Google requires that you hide your address (or 'clear' your address) in your Google Business Profile. Your business has a dedicated street address and a local phone number, but your customers don't to come to you at your location....this is a 'pure' service area business.

If you have a commercial address that people can visit AND your also travel from your home or office to serve your customers, your business is a considered a hybrid service area business.

The Local City Landing Pages techniques can work equally well with both types of service area businesses.

Interested in examples of local city pages?

See our post that lists examples of local city landing pages we have created with clients to target geographic areas they service that are outside their immediate ares.