On the City List & Extra Content tab (labeled “2. City List & Extra Content” in the bottom left corner of the Excel spreadsheet), after you enter the names of the cities and areas you wish to target and create geo landing pages for, you’ll notice that there are many places you can enter more information as you scroll horizontally to the right side of the spreadsheet (see Example 1). Below is an explanation of each of these sections and details on how to use each one.
<Phone> (Phone Number)
The column labeled “<Phone>” at the top allows you to assign a specific phone number to each one of your geo pages. This is helpful if you like your customers to use a different phone number for each of your locations. Simply enter the phone number for each city in the “<Phone>” column in the same row as the city name on the left (see Example 2). If you only have one phone number for all of your locations, then just enter it on each row in the “<Phone>” column across from each city name (see Example 3).
To use these phone numbers on your geo pages, type <Phone> or <Phone1> onto your geo page where you would like it to insert your phone number on each city page. The geo page generator will then look for a phone number in each row of the “<Phone>” column and replace <Phone> or <Phone1> in your page text with the phone number it finds in the same row as each city as it creates a geo page for each city you choose to target.
<Phone2> (Second Phone Number)
You can use the “<Phone2>” column to enter a second phone number for each geo page if you wish to use one. Some companies will use both a local phone number and a toll free number on the same webpage. <Phone1> and <Phone2> allow you to do this.
To use <Phone2>, again just type <Phone2> anywhere on your page where you would like the geo page generator to insert this second phone number.
You’ll find that <Phone> and <Phone1> are interchangeable: they mean the same thing to our system. You can also type <Phone 1> rather than <Phone1> and <Phone 2> instead of <Phone2>.
[Use a visual example to show how the system replaces <Phone> with the phone number beside a city]
<Address> (Business Address)
If you would like to include a business address on some of your geo pages or choose which of your addresses you’d like to put on each geo page, then you can use our address insertion feature. First, go the first tab labeled “1. Page Content” and find the place you’d like to put an address on your geo pages. Enter <Address> in this spot in columns 1, 2, and 3. Then go to the second tab labeled “2. City List & Extra Content”, find the column labeled “<Address>” and enter the address you’d like to use for each city geo page on the row to the right of each city name under the “<Address>” column. The geo page generator will then replace <Address> on your geo pages with the appropriate address for each city as it generates each city geo page. If you have <Address> on your geo pages (in columns 1, 2, and 3 of tab “1. Page Content” but don’t enter an address for some cities under the <Address> column of tab “2. Extra”, then the generator will remove “<Address>” from the geo pages you create that didn’t assign an address to.
[Show visual example to show how the system replaces <Address> with the local address beside a city]
To copy and paste addresses into the “<Address>” column on tab “2. City List & Extra Content”, highlight an address wherever you have it on your computer, select the cell you want to place the address in, and then paste it into the cell. The shortcut keys to do this in Windows are holding down the two keys Ctrl + C to copy the text and then pressing the two keys Ctrl + V to paste the text. To break up an address and put the different parts in the appropriate cells, you can also use these copy and paste shortcut keys.
While most people simply copy and paste their local addresses into the <Address> column, you can also use <City>, <State>, <Province>, and <Country> in them too if you wish to.
[Show visual example of using <City>, <State>, and <Country> in the address field]
<Link1> (Link to Other Webpage or Website)
Each of the <Link> columns (<Link1>,<Link2>,<Link3>, etc.) allow you to put links to other webpages or websites on your geo pages. Here’s an example of how it works:
Let’s say you are a Colorado based company with a presence in a number of cities. From the geo pages you are creating you’d like to link to your company’s Better Business Bureau page, your Yelp pages, your Facebook page, and two pages on your website that provide more in-depth information on the services you provide. Looking at the example below, you can see how this can be done.
[Visual Example]
For our Denver geo page, we would like to link to our company Better Business Bureau page, our Denver Yelp page, our Facebook page, and two pages from our own website. So in the same row we have listed the city of Denver we put the link to our Better Business Bureau page in the column for <Link1>. In the column for <Link2> we place the link to the Yelp page for our Denver location. Under <Link3> we put the link to our business Facebook page. Finally, in the columns under <Link4> and <Link5> we place the links to our own website.
To use the Denver Yelp link we would identify the text in our master document that we’d like to turn into a link. We would then type <Link2> at the beginning of this text and </Link> at the end of this text. In the example below you can see what this looks like. For the Facebook link you would place <Link3> before the text where you want to create the link and </Link> where you’d like the link to end.
[Visual Example]
If you know how to use HTML code, you can use it in your master document too, but using our <Link> feature should be a lot faster and easier when creating a lot of geo pages.
If you’d like to use the same link over and over again for many of your geo pages, you can copy and paste it from cell to cell (the shortcut keys for this on your keyboard are Ctrl + C to Copy and Ctrl + V to Paste. Once you’ve copied a cell and the dashed lines are flashing around it, you can select as many cells as you want – as a large group – and then press Ctrl + V on your keyboard. What you copied will be instantly pasted into all the cells you selected. This is one of the fast ways of copying and pasting in Excel).
In your master document, you don’t need to use <Link1>,<Link2>,<Link3>, etc. in order. Once you’ve assigned a link to <Link3> in the same row as a city, that link will always replace <Link3> on the geo page for that particular city. So in our example above, <Link3> was our business Facebook page. If we wanted to link to our Facebook page near the beginning of our geo page, in the middle, and near the end, we would use <Link3> every time. <Link1>, <Link2>, or <Link5> could come before and after it. It doesn’t matter. <Link3> will always turn into a link to our business Facebook page because that’s how it’s setup in this example.
<Link1> can also be typed as <Link 1>, <Link2> can be typed as <Link 2>, and <Link3> can be entered as <Link 3>, <Link4> as <Link 4> – you get the picture.
How to Create an Unlimited Number of Links
The geo page generator allows you to put up to 12 links on a page. If you would like to use more than this, here’s how to use as many as you want: on a test page on your website, add all of the extra links you would like to use. Then switch to the HTML code view for that page, find the HTML code for each link (it will almost always start with “<a href=”, end with “>” before the text it’s turning into a hyperlink, and then end with “</a>” after the text that it turned into a hyperlink), and copy and paste that code where you would like it to go in columns 1, 2, and 3 of tab “1. Page Content” of the geo page generator.
<Info> (Extra Information to Display on Specific Geo Pages)
If you’d like to add some extra information to only one of your geo pages or say something to only potential customers in certain communities, this feature allows you to do that. Enter any special information or message that you have for a city or community on the same row as that city or community in one of the <Info1>, <Info2>, or <Info3> columns. To display this information on your geo pages, type <Info1>, <Info2>, or <Info3> – whatever the case may be – into your master document where you want the information to appear. As the geo page generator creates geo pages for each city you have specified, it will place the information you have entered only on the city geo pages you have entered it for. For the cities you have not entered anything for in the <Info> area, the <Info> designation will disappear and nothing extra will show up in that spot.
Just as with other features like this, you can type <Info 1> instead of <Info1>, <Info 2> rather than <Info2>, and <Info 3> instead of <Info3>. If you have some HTML coded table, object, or feature you’d like to drop into some of your geo pages or vary its use on different geo pages, you can also use this <Info> feature to help you do that.
[Create a feature in the Excel spreadsheet that allows the user to treat an <Info> block as a paragraph with space above and below it.]
<Image1> (Pictures on Your Geo Pages)
To put pictures on your geo pages, use the <Image> feature. Simply type <Image1> anywhere you’d like your first image to go, put <Image2> anywhere you’d like your second image to go, and so on (if you have more than one image). To make a picture show up in these spots, paste a URL for a picture in the rows of the column beneath the <Image1>. If you have a second picture you’d like to use on all your geo pages, paste another image URL in the rows under <Image2> in that column if you’d like to use different images for different cities, paste a different images URL under <Image1> or <Image2> on the same row as the city that you would like to use that image for.
To create an image or picture URL, upload a picture to your website using your content management system (WordPress, Drupal, Jumla, Wix, etc.) and look for the website address (URL) it creates for that picture. You should be able to copy and paste (Ctrl + C to Copy and Ctrl + V to Paste) the image URL into your web browser (just like you would a normal website address), hit enter, and see your browser show only the image. Copy and paste your image URLs like this into the <Image> area.
[Show Visual Example]
Image Alignment & Spacing
Once you have copied and pasted a picture into the rows under <Image1>, you’ll notice it has some image alignment and spacing options to the right of where you pasted your image URL. You can change them at any time if they don’t work for you.
The alignment option lets you decide if you want the image to be aligned with the right side of your geo page, the left side, or the center. The spacing options allow you to choose how much white space you’d like to have around your picture. We’ve set the default number to 20 pixels of space around each of your images. After you’ve launched your first geo page you can see if this amount of space looks right. If it doesn’t, adjust the spacing until it looks right.
Image Alt Text
While search engine robots scan and can understand images on your page a little bit, their understanding is very limited. So they rely on the alt text (alternative text) attached to images in the HTML code (don’t worry, the geo page generator deals with all the code for you so you can just type in the alt text that you want). From an SEO perspective, the purpose of alt text is to provide a description of the image so search engines can understand it. A good SEO practice is to use this alt text as an opportunity to give search engines another signal as to what your page is all about. Naturally, your image is going to relate to the content on your page in some way. So make sure to make the connection clear by tying at least one of your keywords into the alt text description. Some people go too far with this and use alt text it as an opportunity to stuff tons of keywords into their images. Search engines have been programmed to see through this. So don’t get too carried away with stuffing too many keywords into your image alt text. Create your alt text description using one natural sounding sentence. Search engines look for a natural word flow. So if your description doesn’t look natural, it may not help you at all. However, if you do it right, it will definitely help search engines better understand what your page is all about, and this in turn can help your pages rank higher.
Search engines are also understanding synonyms better than ever (although they still have room for improvement in areas). If you can see in your keyword research that Google sees certain synonyms as being directly linked to what you’re talking about, feel free to use them in your alt text. This can help to make things look and feel more natural. If you use multiple images on a page, you can maybe use each image as an opportunity to say something about one important keyword. This can also make things more natural.
How to Put Lots of Images in Your Geo Pages
Our geo page generator allows you to put up to 5 images on a page. If you would like to use more than this, here’s how to use as many as you want: on a test page on your website, add all of the extra images you would like to use. Then switch to the HTML code view for that page, find the HTML code for each image (it always starts with “<img” and end with “>”), and copy and paste that code where you would like it to go in columns 1, 2, and 3 of tab “1. Page Content” of the geo page generator. If you’re not using all the <Info> tags, you could also paste the HTML image code into the rows in the <Info> columns, and then place these <Info> tags in your geo pages wherever you’d like one of these extra images to go.
How to Add a Table
If you’d like to add a table to any of your geo pages, here’s some help with that.