We’ve now reached the third and final installment of our geo hub series, a succession of posts that have taught us the importance of geo hubs and why we create them. Check out parts one and two here and here. Now that we’ve started the process of creating geo hubs in proximity to our main office locations, we’ll be discussing the steps to take from an SEO standpoint to ensure their optimization will garner the furthest reach. Here are a few techniques to keep in mind:
Proper Schema Information
Using the proper schema information for additional SEO benefits has been ongoing for years and seems to only increase in importance as time passes. Think of schema information as additional data you can provide to search engines such as Google, but it exists in the backend in the source code instead of cluttered on the front end, where it would compromise user experience.
We have thorough documentation of the schema information that has an impact on local, and in this case, your geo hubs. You can see some examples here. Likewise, in the following podcast and its transcription, you can do a deep dive that can cover all of the bases.
Justia, the popular legal services directory, has outdone its competitors by oftentimes including over 50 instances of schema on its directory pages. If you want to get a glimpse of what schema is available to include on your own geo hubs post-launch, that would also be a recommended framework to take advantage of.
Pointing Your GBP to the Clearest/Closest Location
Because geo hubs have a localized edge to them, it is important to include localized information throughout the page. Besides the standard SEO optimizations of geo-specific keywords within the text and header tags, you’ll want to include some additional transparent information, such as map embeds and address information tied to the location you have that is closest (think GBP or office location).
On the other side, it goes a long way for your additional local SEO presence to be able to link to the most relevant geo hub main page from your GBP. If you have multiple office locations and they all link to the homepage, you miss out on the connection of your GBP going more specifically to the geo hub/pages that match with the actual location instead of your main page that defers to your “main office,” which could be quite distant from the city in question.
Page-Level Link Building
Doing page-level link-building for your geo hubs is paramount for success. It is always important to have a link-building strategy in place for the overall authority of your website, but never overlook the importance of building links to individual hubs and even individual pages. This is extremely common in SEO troubleshooting of inferior rankings that are tied to the interior pages of a website.
If you want to learn more about what it means to direct links to specific pages on a website instead of simply the main URL or “root” of your website, the following article goes into more detail about why a successful authority-building campaign requires more targets throughout your website.
Sitemap Inclusion and Proper Hub Placement on Your Website
Properly setting up your website with correct navigation, sound site architecture, and an uploaded sitemap to Google Search Console so your website is crawlable are all the basics of what can be considered a “healthy” website. While this can get awfully technical—especially with massive websites—fortunately, the average law firm website doesn’t get past 5,000 pages, unlike some enterprise-level websites. Either way, indexing is a common theme with SEOs, and if you don’t have conversations about this at all, it is important to bring it up briefly in your next marketing meeting.
Creating an /areas-we-serve/ or /locations/ in anticipation of building out geo hubs is essential for the long-term success of this type of content campaign. In the following article, you can get some more insight into the thought process around site architecture.
This article will also help in deciding the parent pages of your Geo content and the best naming conventions to use when extending URLs to capture these new pages.
The Right Citations Partner
Having a reliable citations partner is important if you want to keep citations cohesive, updated, and capable of notifying you of outdated citation information that can interfere with your current location. In the following article, we lay out the basis of what a citations partner may be.
There are plenty of options out there—most commonly Yext, which many SEOs may shudder to think about. While BrightLocal and WhiteSpark have their merits, we’ve seen a lot of success with Soci as of late.
Contact Market My Market for Top-Notch Geo Hub Content
If you’re looking for best-in-class geo hub content that will outshine the competition, look no further than Market My Market. Our talented team of content writers will craft outstanding written copy for your site that will drive traffic and turn into leads. Likewise, our experienced SEO team can take your geo hub content and optimize it so that it ranks well on search engines. We have years of experience and a depth of industry knowledge. For further questions or to learn more about your options, call us at (866) 691-5533 or complete our online contact form.
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