Episode 9: What Top Local Landing Pages Have in Common

Key Takeaways

• Local landing pages should be city-specific and service-specific
• Competitor analysis should distinguish between businesses doing intentional SEO and those just benefiting from longevity or a keyword-rich business name
• Page titles and H1 tags with keywords still matter significantly — especially in competitive industries
• Internal linking is one of the most underutilized strategies for local pages
• Focus on conversions, not just traffic

Local landing pages are one of the most powerful tools in a multi-location brand's SEO arsenal — but most businesses either do not have them or are not optimizing them properly. The pages that rank at the top of local search results share specific characteristics: They are city-specific, service-specific, locally relevant, and designed to convert, not just attract traffic.

In this episode of the Local Marketing Beat podcast, host Christian Hustle sits down with Amanda Jordan, Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo, to break down what the top-performing local landing pages have in common, how to analyze competitor pages without copying them, why internal linking is the secret weapon for franchises, and how to measure success beyond rankings.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to the episode and guest Amanda Jordan

01:30 What is a local landing page and why does it matter?

03:33 Why local pages outperform homepages for local search intent

04:48 How to analyze competitor local landing pages

09:01 Common elements on top-performing local pages

12:14 Internal linking strategies for local pages at scale

17:00 Tools for competitor analysis and keyword research

20:00 Local keyword research: why regional language differences matter

21:40 Testing and optimizing local landing pages

25:00 Measuring success: rankings, clicks, conversions, and revenue

27:00 Final advice: there is no secret, just do the research

Local Landing Pages Capture the Most Targeted Audience

“It is a page that is intended to capture and convert people who have a local search intent for a specific service or product that you offer. Its goal is very conversion driven — it should also give anyone who visits the page all the information they need to make a decision while they’re still on that page.” — Amanda Jordan

Amanda defines a local landing page as any city-specific and service-specific page designed to capture and convert users with local search intent.

Unlike a homepage that tries to serve all audiences, a local landing page targets the exact intersection of a service and a geography — “window repair near me” or “English tutoring in Barcelona.”

She stresses that these pages should not just rank — they should convert. Every element on the page should be working to give the visitor enough information and trust to take action without leaving. For multi-location brands that currently rely on their homepage or a single services page to capture all local traffic, the message is clear: You are leaving significant traffic and conversions on the table.

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Analyze Competitors — But Know the Difference Between Strategy and Luck

“Sometimes you’ll find that your competitor just got lucky. They’ve been the longest-standing business in that area so they’re just kind of benefiting from existing for so long. You don’t want to take the strategy of someone who’s just benefiting from their circumstance because there isn’t a strategy.” — Amanda Jordan

Amanda outlines a disciplined approach to competitor analysis. The first step is determining whether a competitor is actually doing intentional SEO or simply ranking because of longevity, a keyword-rich business name, or lack of competition.

Copying the approach of a business that ranks by accident will not produce results.

For competitors that are clearly investing in local SEO, Amanda recommends analyzing known ranking factors: page titles, H1 tags, local relevance features, testimonials, backlink profiles, and conversion elements.

The goal is not to copy but to identify gaps — what are they doing that you are not? What opportunities are they missing?

Keywords in Page Titles and H1 Tags Still Matter

“Page titles and H1 tags having the keywords in them — that is still a huge factor. And the more competitive the industry is, the more important it is. We’ve done study after study showing that specificity drives rankings.” — Amanda Jordan

Despite ongoing debate in the SEO community, Amanda’s testing consistently shows that keywords in page titles and H1 tags remain one of the strongest on-page ranking signals for local search.

In highly competitive verticals like legal services, her team has found that including multiple variations of a core keyword in the page title can measurably improve rankings over a single mention.

She also highlights the importance of local relevance on the page itself. One of her favorite examples is a nationwide pest control franchise that includes “most common pests in your area” on each location page — content that is localized without requiring completely unique copy for every city. For brands building local pages at scale, this approach balances localization with operational efficiency: Find elements that can be genuinely local without creating an unsustainable content workload.

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Internal Linking Is the Secret Weapon for Franchises

“Internal linking is something that a lot of smaller businesses are missing out on. Larger franchises that outperform smaller franchises use those other locations for internal linking opportunities and they often make microsites so there’s an entire ecosystem for each location.” — Amanda Jordan

Amanda identifies internal linking as one of the most underutilized strategies in local SEO — and the single biggest differentiator between large franchises that dominate local results and smaller competitors that struggle.

The best-performing multi-location brands build internal linking into their information architecture from the start, creating connections between service pages, city pages, and content clusters.

Her practical advice: Vary anchor text with local modifiers (not the same generic term for every city page), build internal linking into the page architecture plan rather than retrofitting it later, and create topical content clusters specifically to generate internal linking opportunities.

She even built a Python script using ChatGPT that crawls pages to find unlinked keyword mentions — dramatically reducing the time her team spends finding internal linking opportunities across client sites.

Test Before You Scale — and Measure Conversions, Not Just Rankings

“If you’re a local SEO, your clients are looking to make more revenue from your SEO services, not just to get more traffic to pages. Make sure you’re following it all the way through to the end.” — Amanda Jordan

Amanda makes a strong case for testing changes on a subset of location pages before rolling them out across an entire network.

For multi-location brands with dozens or hundreds of pages, this approach uses some pages as a control group and others as test pages — providing clear data on whether a change actually improves rankings, clicks, or conversions before committing resources to sitewide implementation.

Her measurement framework is revenue-focused: Google Search Console for ranking and click data, Google Analytics with Tag Manager for conversion tracking, and whenever possible, connecting conversions to actual sales.

She recommends listening to recorded calls and reviewing form submissions to assess lead quality — not just quantity. For brands using analytics to measure location performance, Amanda’s closing advice is direct: A local page that ranks well but does not convert is not doing its job. Follow the funnel all the way through to revenue.