Local SEO pages

What a local SEO page is

A local SEO page is a page written to be the answer to a search that includes a place: "furnace repair Penticton", "dog groomer near me", "family lawyer Nanaimo". It names one service and one place, and it carries the details a person in that place checks before they call: where you are, when you are open, what area you cover, and what it costs to get you there.

It is not a service page with a town name added, and it is not a service area page, which is the lighter version for towns you travel to but have no premises in. A local SEO page is for a place where you are, or the one place that produces most of your work. Ten of them with the town name swapped is the thing this service exists to replace.

Who this is for

A business whose customers come from a defined area and search with a place name or "near me": trades, clinics, lawyers, accountants, restaurants, shops, anyone with a door or a van. It suits a business with one location and several services, where each service needs its own local page, and a business with two or three locations, where each location needs its own set.

It is not for a business that sells across the country from a website, where the place does not matter to the buyer. That business needs SEO landing pages built for the commercial search without the geography. It is also not for a business with twenty locations wanting twenty pages by Friday; that is a template, and a template is the problem.

What goes in it

Each page answers the search in the first two sentences: what you do, where, and how to reach you. Then it carries the local detail a searcher looks for and a stamped-out page cannot supply.

• The service, described for this place. Not a general description, but what the job involves here: the housing stock, the climate, the local rules, the typical call. A furnace page for a mountain town reads differently from one for the coast.
• The practical answers. Hours, parking, the area covered with the towns named, callout or travel charges, how soon someone can come, and what happens after hours. These are the local FAQs, and they belong on the page, not in a separate block.
• Consistent business details. Name, address and phone number spelled exactly as they appear on your business listing and every directory, so a machine treats them as one business.
• Local proof. A described job from that area, a review from a customer who names the place, or a photo of your own vehicle on a recognisable street. Proof a competitor across the province cannot fake.
• Links. To the plain service page for the detail, to the other locations if there are any, and from the home page and the listing back to this page.

The title tag and meta description are written for the same search, with the place in both.

What you get

The pages. Usually 600 to 1,000 words each, as editable documents, one per service and place, with the title tag, meta description and internal links marked. Entered on the site by you, or by me as CMS content entry.

The listing check. One page comparing your business listing against the new pages: name, address, phone, hours, categories and service list, with every mismatch marked for correction. If you want the listing rewritten to match, that is Google Business Profile copy and can be added.

The local search sheet. One spreadsheet, one row per search with a place in it that the pages are built for, so you know what each page is meant to win and can check it in a year.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A plumbing company based in Vernon with four vans has one "Services" page listing eleven services and a "Service areas" page naming nine towns. Searches in the area are for a service plus a town: "hot water tank replacement Vernon", "drain cleaning Armstrong", "emergency plumber Lake Country". None has a page. The listing says the company opens at eight; the website says seven.

The work produces six local SEO pages for Vernon, one for each of the six services the search sheet shows people actually search for with a place. Each carries the after-hours number, the travel charge for the outlying towns, and a described job from a named neighbourhood. The remaining five services stay on the main services page because nobody searches for them locally. The listing check finds the hours mismatch, a missing category, and a phone number formatted three different ways across directories. The nine outlying towns are recommended for service area pages later, three at a time, starting with the two that already produce calls.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you do, where your customers come from, which services get the calls, and where your listing stands. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per page or per set, agreed before anything starts.
3. The local research. Which service-and-place searches are actually made in your area, and what is shown for each now. Read-only access to your search data and your listing helps here.
4. The interview. Forty-five minutes with whoever takes the calls, because they know what customers in each place ask and what jobs are typical there.
5. Drafts and delivery. Two to three weeks for a set of four to six pages. You check the practical details, then the pages, the listing check and the search sheet are delivered together.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the number of pages, how many services and places they cover, and whether the listing check and listing copy are included. A set of pages for one location costs less per page than single pages, because the research and the interview are shared. The pricing page shows how fixed pricing works here and the published bands for the services that have them.

What happens next

The listing is usually the next job: Google Business Profile copy so the description, services and posts say what the pages say. Then service area pages for the towns you travel to, a few at a time. When the reviews start arriving, review response templates give you something calm to say under each one.