A ‘local’ business is classed as one providing goods or services within a specific geographic area. Of course, you might have a physical base in that area — such as if you run a restaurant, an office or any other establishment where you meet either customers or clients in person.
Perhaps surprisingly, however, you don’t strictly need to have a permanent base in that area in order to serve it. For example, a pizza shop based in Durham could opt to deliver pizza as far as Hartlepool, and so could have an interest in portraying itself as a ‘Hartlepool business’.
If you are eager to target markets far outside the city or town where the company itself has its headquarters, you need to make the right first impression — and what you post on your corporate website can be a key part of this equation. Here are several things worth including on the site…
Location-specific landing pages
Your company might cater for customers or clients from multiple settlements or even counties. Indeed, you could dedicate each of these landing pages to an individual county or — if you would deem it populous enough to warrant its own page — town or city.
To this end, you might be happy to settle for a ‘Teesside’ page or instead ‘Middlesbrough’ and ‘Stockton’ pages. If you anticipate adding many pages, you might want to make the task easier by investing in a Content Management System (CMS) for your website.
In any case, make sure the actual pages come with unique content relevant to the area. In other words, don’t simply replicate or regurgitate essentially the same content across multiple pages, with the changes largely limited to swapping out one location name for another.
Testimonials from local customers
For many companies, it’s standard practice for their websites to show plaudits from satisfied customers. Still, any testimonials you add to a location-specific landing page should be from the same location to which the page itself is devoted.
Imagine how someone from Northumberland could react if a Northumberland-focused landing page includes comments with such labels as ‘Mark, Yarm’ or ‘Sophie, Seaham’. You could risk coming across as careless, like you really just treat the Northumberland market as an afterthought.
Blog posts on local issues and developments
Even if your website already has a blog, it might currently be filled with content on relatively generic subjects appropriate to people right across the world rather than particular areas.
It might be worth looking at the local news to see if anything is happening that would (or could) affect members of your target audience. So, if you run a brick-and-mortar shop selling vinyl records, why not publish some online articles previewing upcoming music gigs and festivals?
Don’t fret if you aren’t a dab hand at writing, as you could just leave members of our copywriting team to produce those blog articles on your behalf. Contact us with an outline of what you want in the content; you can call 01325 582112 or email info@webaheadinternetltd.co.uk.
