Local landing pages often lack substance. Small business owners that are accustomed to doing everything themselves take on the task of web designer and content creator too often. The trend of small business owners doing everything, from marketing to sales and making service calls is common.

But when a landing page doesn’t convert properly, this leads to lost sales – not acceptable for a growing business.

Local searches lead to 18% of consumers making purchases compared to just 7% for non-local searches. So, how do you optimize your page to convert local searches?

Cover the Basics First

The basics matter a lot, and this means doing a few different things:

• Optimizing pages based on visitor data
• Focusing on page loading speed
• Add in meta data

Landing pages must be optimized for mobile. People are searching on mobile devices, and if your site’s mobile experience is poor, you need to stop reading right now. Fix mobile issues, and focus on mobile speeds and user-experience.

Create Killer Copy

You’re not going to become a copywriter overnight, so the best you can do is tweak, adjust and test your landing page copy. The goal is to create copy that converts, and this varies from one industry to the next.

Some long-form copy pages have insane conversion rates, but service businesses often have shorter copy.

Why?

No one wants to read a 3,000 word copy on website like Miranda Plumbing and A/C before having a drain unclogged.

Mobile screens have also changed the way that copy is created. The days of long headlines are behind us because two-line sentences are what fit on a mobile screen. Your copy will lose that pop when visitors need to scroll to see an entire title.

Comprehension at a glance is what you should aim for in your headlines.

A few points to include in your copy are:

• Read pain points (i.e. I have water leaking from a pipe or my dog’s incision site is bleeding)
• Try and solve the reader’s problem in the copy
• Benefits need to be apparent, front and center

Create good copy, and sales rise. Period.

Incorporate Calls to Action

It’s not uncommon for small businesses to forget the importance of calls to action. When a reader goes to your landing page, are you telling them what to do next? People need to be directed toward the action you want them to make.

This means:

• Telling the viewer to request an estimate.
• Prompting the viewer to pick up the phone and call.
• Prompting the viewer to add an item to their shopping cart.

Urgency is a factor, but simplicity is also very important in increasing conversions. You must be able to provide a call-to-action that is simple and easy for the reader to complete. A form with 20 fields will have a much lower conversion rate than a form that has three or four fields.

There’s also no harm in placing multiple call-to-actions in one copy.

Conduct your own A/B testing to find out what works best for your site and copy. Small tweaks to your copy will lead to higher click-through rates and conversions.