City Pages for surrounding markets

City pages are a powerful SEO tool.  City pages can help you get found by new customers and improve your rankings for niche services within your area.

When it comes to local SEO for Google Maps, you can only optimize the local where you have a verified Google My Business listing. This is the address and city where your physical office is located. City Pages will only apply to the organic search results in Google. However, an overwhelming number of people in any city will still look to the organic search results to find what they are looking for.

Integrate Location Signals

Location signals are data points that you add into your City Pages that help solidify your targeted location / metro area.  For example, let’s say you are a car accident lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia with a verified GMB listing that has an Atlanta address.

However, you want to also get found by people in Marietta, Georgia who are searching for a Marietta car accident lawyer. So you would have a City Page targeting Marietta Car Accident Lawyer, and within that City Page, you would integrate location signals. Again, location signals are data points that help “signal” to Google the targeted metro area within your page.



Verify Google My Business Listing

Before you can compete in Google Maps, your must have a verified Google My Business listing for your business. This verified listing must reflect your business’s address and location to include business hours, local phone number, and link to your website.  If you are a business that accepts appointments, you can include links to where customers schedule appoints. The key to a successful Google My Business listing is having complete and accurate information about your business. If the information is not accurate,  then your business presence in search could suffer due to a lack of relevance.

Publish Google Posts

Google Post features are short posts similar to other social media posts, Google posts let you include a picture, a video, a link, and even a (call-to-action button) CTA button.  You need to use UTM codes in order to use Google Analytics to measure the success of your Google Post. 

Google launched a new product for Google My Business owners back in June 2017 called Google Posts. Think if this as a way for GMB owners to post updates and information about their business directly in their Google My Business account. You can simply copy the Google reviews from your GMB listing, and republish them as a Google Post. Other great Google Post ideas are to publish events.

Citation Distribution

 Citation distribution is the number of times your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are listed across the internet. It's important for SEO because it helps Google verify your business information and improve your local search ranking. Probably about 20 to 40 are good for SEO

Google evaluates your citation distribution and portfolio and looks at the volume, authority, and consistency your citations across the web as a means to determine your rankings in Google Maps / Google local search. A citation is simply a published version of your business name, address, phone #, and website URL. However, the data used your Google My Business listing is the base citation that Google uses to determine consistency. If you have citations published that do not match your GMB listing data, it will be  large scale inconsistencies that can negatively impact your rankings and presence in local search. 



Use a lot of images

Adding a lot of images to your GMB (Google My Business listings) will increase actions on your listing easily by a factor of 10x. Actions = authority, and authority = rankings.

Images dramatically increase engagement on your local Google business page from mobile devices.

People who find your local Google business page via mobile will find it easy to open your photos and swipe through.

Create a Virtual Tours

Perhaps the only thing that can generate more actions on your Google business listing than images are virtual tours. The rise of popularity in virtual reality will only increase in importance of providing virtual tours of your local business.



Generate more time on "Site opportunities"

Understand that Google’s ranking algorithm favors relevance and authority, and the more time someone stays on your listing, the more authority you’ll build into your Google business listing.



Use videos, images and virtual tours for "time on Site"

Creating more interactive media content such as videos, images, and virtual tours will help you boost the “time on site” metric A LOT

Create a strong "About Us" page

It’s a bit obscure now, but you can edit / create an about section for your GMB listing by first going to aboutme.google.com/, and then appending your GMB / Google Maps ID to the end of the forward slash. You get your GMB ID by visiting your listing in Google Maps and grabbing the long numbered portion of the URL only. Then add that page ID to the end of the about URL.



Use niche category in titles

 If your main business category isn’t available, include your niche category in the title tag of your GMB listing.

Include tags

If your main business category isn’t available, include your niche category in the title tag of your GMB listing.

Links to sub-pages

In the “about” description section of your GMB listing (see tip #5 above), create anchor text links pointing out to sub pages with your website. For example, if you are plastic surgeon, link “face lift” out to your Face Lift specific landing page within your website.

Create exact match NAP site Citations

When creating your citations, it’s CRITICALLY important that every one matches your GMB / Google Maps listing. Even the slightest discrepancy can create volatility and dilute the relevance of your local business data, and in turn your local rankings in Google Maps.

Publish citations in niche directories

Find directories to your specific metro area, and your specific industry, to get highly targeted NAP citations published.

Include schema on your website

When you publish your NAP citation on your website, wrap your NAP in Schema language. I recommend using JSON – LD to create Schema for your website.

Create exact match NAP site Citations

 Citation distribution is the number of times your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are listed across the internet. It's important for SEO because it helps Google verify your business information and improve your local search ranking. Probably about 20 to 40 are good for SEO



Create city pages

Create city specific landing pages within your website. We call these city pages, and they help give your business a high level of relevance and authority for your targeted location.

Add your page URL in your GMB listing

In your GMB listing, you have the option to link to a URL. Make sure the URL you use is the most relevant landing page for your business and geo-targeted area. This is not necessarily always going to be your homepage



Embed your GMB listing

Embed your Google maps business listing (GMB) into your city specific landing pages. It’s also valuable, for some businesses, to embed your Google local listing map into the footer of your website.

SEO for city pages

Add your targeted metro area as the first instance in the title tag of your city page.

Add your page URL in your GMB listing

Within your city page, make sure to include a link directly to your GMB listing. This is also accomplished when you embed your GMB listing directly into your city page (see point #15 above).

Start a blog

Start a business blog and write about local news and information relevant to your targeted metro area, and share your content across all social media platforms, including your GMB listing. One of the latest updates to Google My Business is the ability to add a Post. 



Get Reviews

Over 88% of consumers trust reviews as a resource when deciding what business to buy from or hire. One of the fastest ways to generate reviews is to send an email to recent customers or clients asking for a review and including a link directly to your GMB listing.