The Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Google Business Profile Landing Pages

During LocalU virtual in November, I presented tips and tactics for creating local content that provides unique value to local audiences.  Arguably the most important page for a local business is the Google Business Profile (GBP) landing page. This page is how you can increase visibility in the map pack for your GBP listing(s). Many people wonder if the URL you link to in GBP impacts rankings in the local pack, and we confirmed that it indeed does.  So it goes without saying you need to optimize your GBP landing page to perform better in maps. The follow-up question many have is, how?

What Page on Your Site Do You Link Your Google Business Profile To?

For local businesses with one location, your GBP landing page may be the homepage. However, this is not always the case and it’s important to check by going into Google Search Console (GSC) and identifying the page that is getting traffic for the keyword you want to rank for in maps. The only caveat here is to make sure a search for the keyword you pick returns a map pack.  If it doesn’t pick another one.

The example below shows an HVAC company’s website that gets more organic traffic than the homepage for “air conditioning repair.”  If this company wanted to increase map rankings for “AC repair” searches, they might want to test pointing GBP traffic to that service page instead of the homepage.

What Page Should a Business With Multiple GBPs Link To?

For a multi-location business, you will need a dedicated city page or a city-specific service page for each GBP location. Make sure you are using UTMs to track your GBP traffic by location, this way you can see GBP vs. organic data in GSC.

You want to optimize your GBP landing page for the money keyword you want your GBP listing to rank for. If the city page your GBP is linking to is NOT ranking organically in that area for your money keyword you need to work on optimization until it is. Often we see websites where the homepage ranks above everything for city-specific searches. This is common but working on local organic rankings for your city pages will help rankings for your GBPs.

Below is an example of a personal injury lawyer with an office in Queens and an office in Staten Island.  At first, they were sending their Staten Island GBP traffic to their homepage, which was optimized for Queens. We switched the GBP link to a page targeting “personal injury lawyer Staten Island” and within the month we saw dramatic ranking increases for their Staten Island GBP.

What About Practitioner Listings?

Each GBP practitioner listing should have a primary category that is different from the main listing – we all know this. As you can imagine, you will want to have a different GBP landing page for these listings as well, optimized for a different keyword. This page can be an expert page for the practitioner, a service page, or sometimes a city page.

What Content Needs to be on a GBP Landing Page?

Make sure you mention all the different services you offer on your GBP landing page(s). If the service isn’t mentioned there, or somewhere else on your site, it will be hard for Google to understand what your GBP should show up for besides the main keyword you’re optimized for. Plus, adding these services to the GBP landing page can help these “website mentions” justifications show up (see below).