Home/Blog/Your Checkpoints before Installing a Local Store Locator Plugin

Just think a customer is looking for local businesses similar to yours. Now everything depends on how fast you will be able to show your NAP, directions and other information. It is easy for you if you have your business in 5 or 6 different locations. Just create a page and keep it under a menu tab, namely locations. Your customers need to make a click and they are provided with the NAP, hours of operation, photos reviews, etc.

But if you have a widespread business and have stores in numerous locations, it is just not practical to list them on your website, whether it is visited from desktops or laptops. It is only a store locator plugin that can help you out. It allows the customers to enter a city or zip code and assist them to the right resource.

What Should You Look for in a Store Locator Plugin?

  • Check whether the plugins allows you to create a customizable and everlasting landing page meant for specific locations. It is certainly necessary for SEO as it would open the door of several opportunities ajar for you.
  • Another thing you have to ensure is whether it lets you search by the city as well as zip code. It is very important as it enables people with a minimum idea about zip codes to find your business.
  • You also need to check if it works perfectly on all devices. This is a must today, as the number of people surfing the internet from mobile devices is increasing day by day.
  • The plugin should work on your existing website no matter if it is developed on WordPress, Demandware or Magneto. Try to avoid redeveloping the website just to ensure that your plugin is working properly.
  • It would be great if the plugin comes with the feature of automatic geolocation detection i.e. the ability to detect the location where the user is searching from.
  • It should also have some extra features like search text auto completion, synchronization with a database to upload location data and search filters to have refined results on the basis of personal requirement.

Quality of Landing Pages

To be locally optimized, you have to pay a lot of attention to your landing pages. These are the key traffic drivers for you. Apart from containing NAP and unique content meant for a specific region, you should include store-specific reviews and videos. It is also very necessary to link your landing page with Google My Business Listings. Some useful content you can include to make your landing page effective are mentioned below.

  • Driving directors
  • Welcome message
  • NAP
  • Local community proofs
  • Links from social media sites
  • Live chat options
  • Hours of operation
  • Reviews and testimonials
  • Location-based special coupons and offers
  • A list of brands
  • Videos related to specific location and store
  • A store map

Indexing Your Landing Pages

Get into a profound research to help Google crawl and index your local landing pages. You should develop plugins using CSS, Javascript and AJAX as Google will crawl these codes only. Here are some effective suggestions.

  • Link your other citations to the landing pages instead of the homepage.
  • Add an XML sitemap to Google Search Console.
  • Create a constant sitemap on your website that has links of all the landing pages.
  • Add an alphabetical directory of locations with links that can be crawled on the main location page.

Properly implemented local plugins coupled with well-structured landing pages cement the pillars of success for your SEO mission. The above-mentioned suggestions chariot you closer to your objective. For more information you can surf the Internet or call the professionals who provide local SEO services in Toronto.