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Go for easy KD niches because the competition are weak and not even SEOs. We can likely rank within a few months for SL keywords, hopeful y faster for our KGR long tail keywords, and power up our GMB for fast results too.
you don’t need to spend endless hours on each asset. You can be guiding multiple lead generation assets to the top of Google at the same time. You don’t have to create one and sit there for 4 months before starting another. Set one up, optimize it correctly, figure out the ongoing work you have, schedule that in, then focus on the next asset!
To pick your niche, simply keep doing keyword research for different niches and locations until you have found the best one possible. Doing al this research wil give you confidence in your niche, as wel as giving you options for your next lead generation project.
Setting up a localized PBN to create extremely powerful, localized links in a city/location to power up al your lead generation assets.
Optimizing A Local Site’s OnPage
in Local SEO, we aren’t competing with sites who have hundreds of pages. This means we don’t need endless amounts of content.
we do want to make each page we make as strong and optimized as possible.
This chapter should be read from start to finish before implementing any steps. When it comes to OnPage, you need a holistic understanding of al the key elements before you can start making wel -informed decisions for new sites or existing sites.
Website Speed
Website loading speed is an important ranking factor. Not to mention an important conversion factor. You should aim to have your website loading within 2-3 seconds if possible, but the faster the better.
Generate Press & Generate Blocks). Check it out when you’re ready, it’s a template for best OnPage practises! https://localkingdom.net/
Site Architecture
Site architecture (how you layout your pages) is real y important. We need a clear and logical strategy.
Some pages are meant to rank, some are meant to support those ranking pages
Homepage - The homepage is general y going to be optimized for SL keywords according to where the business is first situated. www.example.com Location pages - Location pages act like homepages (we rank them for SL keywords), but have a slightly different URL structure. www.example.com/location Service pages - We rank service pages for service search terms with keyword volume, like “roof repairs Manchester”. www.example.com/roof-repairs Supporting service pages - We use service pages, sometimes even without keyword volume, to build more topical relevance and link to our other ranking service pages. Ideal y, there wil be searches, but in smal locations, there might be a negligible amount. www.example.com/slate-tile-repair Blog articles - We write articles and link them to ranking pages to pass internal link juice. Occasional y we might want to rank a blog article. www.example.com/blog/best-tradesman-materials About - Just a generic page to give customers more info about the business. www.example.com/about Contact - A page for customers to contact us from. www.example.com/contact
Canonicalization
We avoid canonicalization in our site architecture by clearly differentiating our page names.
By avoiding canonicalization, we clearly communicate to Google how our pages should be understood and prioritized for the keywords we are targeting.
Here are some example search terms that would al be under the same ranking page (the homepage in our example): “Roofing manchester” “Roofers manchester” “Roofing company manchester” Basical y most of our SL keywords that are very similar. This means we don’t need to create additional pages in order to rank for these keywords. We don’t need an extra page like: roofersexample.com/roofers-manchester This would be a clear example of canonicalization.
Avoid this: example.com/roofing-services/flat-roofing Have this: example.com/flat-roofing Or example.com/flat-roofing-location example.com//flat-roofing/location For supporting content, try not to over canonicalize too.
So instead of having example.com/roof-repairs example.com/slate-roof-repairs Do this instead... example.com/roof-repairs example.com/slate-tile-repair
Just be aware you are trying to keep page names as separate as possible in order to help Google differentiate between how it should rank your pages.
If you have built your site already and it is canonicalized to hel , start using 301 redirects on the pages that are canonicalizing your ranking pages. Redirect the canonicalizing page to the page you want al the relevancy pushed to - AKA your ranking pages.
Types of Pages
Ranking pages - Ranking pages are our homepage, service pages, and location pages. Homepage - We rank our homepage for SL keywords. It’s our most powerful page and it’s the most logical page that would rank for SL keywords. If you have a client in Florida cal ed bobsbarbers.com, our homepage should rank for “barber Florida” or “Florida barber” type keywords. Service pages - Service pages should rank for specific services you or your client provides. This means we make page names to match these keywords with keyword search volume. An example would be bobsbarbers.com/haircut. Supporting pages - Supporting pages are created to build topical relevance and send internal link juice throughout our site. We can boost these pages up and point them towards our home, services, or location pages. These are going to be our blog articles and service pages without/with less keyword volume. Ideal y, these pages wil rank and generate traffic in their own right, but if not, they can at least pass niche/location relevance to other pages. Locations - If Bob the barber added a new location to his business in Las Vegas, that page would be cal ed bobsbarbers.com/barbers-las-vegas, his location page would rank for SL keywords in Las Vegas. Although we are using the word barbers twice in our URL, we are not canonicalized. The reason? Google realizes our homepage is designed to rank for “barber Florida” type keywords, whereas this new page is meant to rank for “barber Las Vegas” keywords.
Understanding Location Pages
The location page is the page that wil rank for SL keywords - and kind of act as your homepage for each additional area you target. As location pages can get us SL keyword clicks, they are an important part of our Local SEO strategy.
If I had a client who wanted to serve a single state or city, I would stil add additional location pages for areas within their overal service radius. For example, in our Manchester example, there are prominent nearby areas like Stockport. We would create a page like this to cover Stockport:
The reasons we do this are twofold. Firstly, local searchers in Stockport might specify Stockport in their search instead of Manchester, meaning we can pick up extra clicks from Stockport. The other reason is that it wil add local relevancy to our organic and GMB approach. It wil help our GMB to rank in that area (as long as it is not hours away and we have good authority), and general y writing about local points of interest is going to make our GMB and website more local y relevant as a whole from Google’s perspective.
without a high DR or local relevance, it wil be hard to just walk into a brand new city and dominate any area with just a new location page. However, you should have success in adding more and more smal local areas where there is less competition, especial y if they are near your GMB.
A single state/city client site - If my client was set on sticking with their state or city and didn’t want to expand, I would create location pages for the areas within his service radius. I’d choose any with a population over 10,000. Again, this is more relevant to service area businesses
A multi-location client site - If you have a physical address client with multi-locations, you simply optimize each GMB location as best as you can. For service area businesses, I would optimize around the area where each GMB is, then add additional location pages nearby where it looks to be a good ranking opportunity (could be a nearby vil age with 20,000 people in it who might search “roofer [town]”).
Writing Ranking Pages
These are some general rules you should be thinking about when creating your content.
Check out this link to see a dummy page laid out with best practices: https://localkingdom.net/keyword/location/
First sentence - Use your targeted keywords in the first sentence of your ranking page. LSI keywords - Include LSI keywords in and around your targeted keywords to show niche/location relevancy. Avoid canonicalization - Ensure you are not canonicalizing other ranking pages by using too many LSI’s that are specific to another ranking page. Use specific data points - Google your page topic and see what appears. You might Google something like roof repairs. Check the top results and take specific data points from the top results. We know that Google understands these pages to have the best information on roof repairs, so if we can include numbers, dates, locations, etc. that these pages use, Google is more likely to think we are relevant to the keywords we are targeting. I haven’t proved this is a massive needle mover but I heard the concept a while ago and have implemented it ever since.
Quality - Ideal y, if we can have quality content that people want to read, we should go for that.
Working Out Word Count & Keyword Density Let’s start with our trusty competitor analysis to see what kind of wording approach Google prefers for the SERPs we’re targeting. There is no one size fits al for OnPage SEO. In some niches, Google wants thousands and thousands of words per page to rank it. In other niches, only a smal amount would be expected. That’s why we look to our competitors to gain an understanding of what Google might want for our target SERPs
Remodeling Competitors
After choosing your niche and identifying the keywords you wil target, let’s select a few sites within our niche to remodel our efforts against.
If you have Ahrefs, go ahead and select the competitors on the first page for your keywords who have a low DA compared to the competition. The reason we are doing this is that we are assuming they are ranking wel due to their OnPage optimizations, rather than their high DR.
After you’ve got a few sites to remodel, let’s figure out the word count and keyword density we need for each ranking page by using Seoquake. Generate an info report on the competitor ranking pages we are remodeling
If I was in an easy niche, I would probably just get a feel for the amount of content the competition is using, then just go with best practices. analyzing every single ranking page and turning this into a 1+ hour exercise isn’t real y necessary when taking on weak competition. For medium - hard niches, I would pay more attention to wordcount and keyword density.
Now we want to remodel their general approach as this is what Google is promoting in the SERPs from an OnPage perspective. These are some best practices to bear in mind: - We don’t want a singular keyword over 3.5% - 4% keyword density (e.g. roofing) as you may be over-optimized from day one. - We don’t want a keyword like “manchester roofing” having over 2.8% keyword density. SL keywords are less natural than singular keywords like “roofing” - therefore we should have a lower keyword density or we could be over-optimized and get penalized. - Have over 650 words on a ranking page. These sites fit within this rule, so we’l be writing more than 650 anyway. It can be easy to think you only need 200 words on a page, but as we’re talking about our main ranking pages here (home page, main service pages), it makes sense to beef them up with good niche and local content.
After this analysis, if we were targeting this niche, I would be writing ranking pages to have a 3.8% keyword density for “roofing” and 1.2% for “Manchester”. I would shoot for 800-1000 words to make sure we have the competition outmatched
However, if you’re in a competitive niche and everyone has over 1000 words
Best practice - If you find a real y uncompetitive niche where the highest ranking pages have the world’s worst SEO (<200 words and >4% keyword density), just use these best practices instead. - Wordcount: 1000 words for main ranking pages (home, popular services, location pages) and 400-500 words in real y easy niches where the competition isn’t writing a lot of words at al .
Keyword density: 1.8% - 2.4% is a nice sweet spot for using the keywords we want to rank for.
Writing Location Pages
Use Page Generator Pro to create loads of duplicate style location pages. It’s a great plugin that I’ve been using: https://www.wpzinc.com/plugins/page-generator-pro/ By the way, I found these two tutorials real y useful when setting up that plugin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JnUcB4y8Qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqQgK_KsD8s When creating these extra location pages with the plugin, we wil likely want to set our URLs to be like this: roofingexample.com/roof-repair/location
- Completely unique content would rank highest
- 30% unique & 70% duplicate would come a close second
- 100% duplicate would of course rank third With this in mind, decide what % of duplicate content you want to use for your extra location pages.
Single location clients - I would learn towards writing main location pages (those near to them or where they actual y have GMBs) as completely unique. Then for locations a bit further from their base or with smal er populations, I would consider the mix of unique and duplicate. For real y smal areas (15,000 and less), you could consider the 100% duplicate approach, but some clients might not be comfortable with that approach. Decide what is best for your situation.
Multi-location clients - If my client had physical addresses in different areas, I would treat each area they have an address in like a single location client site described above. The location page would be centered around where their address (and therefore their GMB) is located. Then I would weigh up which additional locations in the area should have location pages and how much unique/duplicate content should be assigned to each page.
an easy way to find more local location pages is by using Google Maps to find your state/city/location, zooming out, then seeing which areas remain on the map. These areas tend to have more searches than those which disappear.
Structuring A Location Page
Write your location page content like it’s a homepage. Remember, we’re ranking for SL keywords - so people want to know a little bit about everything to do with your service. What services you offer, why they should choose you etc.
If going down any kind of duplicate approach, make sure your images aren’t optimized or catered towards a specific location. Just make them niche relevant.
embed a location map in every location page. If this new location page is within my GMB
service radius, I use the same map embed as I do for my home page. If this location page is outside of my GMB radius, I add a map embed of that specific location. For example, we’re roofers in Manchester but have added a Leeds location page. Assuming we have no GMB in Leeds, I would add a map embed of Leeds like so: Swap out the location word used before with your new location word throughout the page. If creating unique or partial y unique landing pages, you can include specific data points that are relevant to that location. Here’s an example of a location page with 30% unique content and 70% duplicate content. https://localkingdom.net/keyword/another-location/
Heading Structure
For headings (H tags), I like to fol ow best practices as it can get messy fol owing competitors.
many SEOs saying that H tags don’t mean anything in SEO, but we have seen jumps in our ranking position when experimenting with OnPage factors, like H tag structure.
This structure is what I use: H1 - Include your niche keyword - but not your location H2 - Include your niche keyword and location (1-2 of these) H3 - Include your keyword and location (2 of these) H4-H6 - Google especial y doesn’t seem to pay much attention to these. I would stil include something relevant in these H tags though, perhaps relevant keywords, a question that is frequently asked, and so on.
Note - Do not include your main niche keyword (roofing in this case) in H1-H3 header tags on any other pages than your specified ranking page. For example, don’t include the keywords “roofing” or “manchester” in your H1-H3 on your about us page. Avoid canonicalizing in any way possible. This is just an extra step to avoid that canonicalization and keep our ranking pages more geared towards the words we actual y want to rank for. The example URL provided shows you best practices for your heading structures: https://localkingdom.net/keyword/location/
Blog Articles
Blog articles are a great way to move your ranking pages up the SERPs. For virtual y al levels of KD, I like a biweekly blog article. You could write more in a medium - hard difficult niche. Here’s an example of a blog article template: https://localkingdom.net/blog-article-title-do-not-use-ranking-page-keywords/ As you can see, there are multiple benefits to writing blog articles:
Local signals - We can embed our Google Maps listing, at the bottom of the article. This helps to build local relevance. We can also add an NAP citation and other links, like our web2.0s and main directories.
Internally link to ranking pages - This is one of the strongest features of the blog writing strategy. I am real y aggressive with internal anchors to ranking pages from blog articles. If I want to boost a specific page, I wil use heavily optimized keyword anchor texts to link to that page from the article. For example, we could link to our manchester roofing example with anchors like “roofing manchester, manchester roofing, roofers in manchester, manchester roofing company” etc. - More on internal linking later in the chapter.
Add more all-round relevance - By writing about sub-topics related to our ranking pages then linking to them, we are building up more contextual and local relevance. Also, Google enjoys fresh, ‘quality’, relevant content.
Articles can rank themselves - We can target our KGR keywords and long tail keywords with blog articles. Sometimes these can rank by themselves, leading to more local traffic, or research type traffic from around the world. Local traffic stands the chance to convert and research traffic boosts our authority in the niche as we have more local traffic than our competitors.
More niche/local relevance - Boost relevancy by external y linking out to authorities in our niche or local area (you should do this towards the end of the article as shown in the example)
Actually help local customers - Actual y write valuable content that local people wil find useful. This wil lead to more leads, conversions, and hopeful y even links.
first add al the ranking pages we want to generate traffic to, then think which supporting niche pages make sense for our site.
- Ask your client. They might like a particular style of roofing that is profitable to them. Maybe the service gets very few searches, but it would add good niche relevance and they can tel you al about the to