Service Area Pages

A Service Area Page is a whole page about one town. It has its own web address, its own photo, and its own words. One entry here is one town page.

Go to Content, then Service Area Pages.

How this differs from Service Area

The two screens sound alike, so it is worth being clear.

Service Area is a list of names. It sits in your footer and says which towns you cover. Nothing more.

Service Area Pages are real pages. Each one has an address a customer can land on from a search, room for a photo and a few paragraphs, and its own wording for Google.

Most businesses use both. The list says where you work. A page is for a town worth a bigger push.

Making a town page

Click Add New, fill in the boxes, then click Save.

The top of the form. Only the town name is required.

1. Town / area name. The place, such as “Maple Falls”. This also sets the page’s web address.

2. State / region. The short code, such as MT. It shows after the town name, as “Maple Falls, MT”.

3. Headline override. The big heading at the top of the page. Leave it empty and your website writes one for you: “Service in Maple Falls, MT”. Fill it in when you want your own words, such as “Remodels and repairs in Maple Falls”.

4. Short intro. A line or two under the heading. It is also the wording Google shows under your link, so make it read like a sentence.

Hero image is the wide photo at the top. Click Select image and pick one. Media walks through the picker.

Body is the rest of the page. Type into it like any page, and add blocks the same way. Pages covers blocks.

Warning

The Slug fills itself in from the town name. It is the last part of the page’s web address, and it should be set once, while the page is new.

Change it later and every old link stops working. Saving and publishing has the full warning.

Then click Publish. The page is live that second.

Showing local photos on the page

A town page works much harder with photos of work you did in that town.

Put those photos in an album of their own first. Gallery walks through making one. Then point a Gallery block at it.

1. Click at the end of the Body, then press Enter for a clean line.
2. Type / and then gallery. Two choices appear. Pick the second, the one that says it pulls from the Gallery collection.
3. Fill in the form, then click Insert.

The Album slug box is the one that matters here. The same form opens again if you click the block and then the pencil.

1. Headline. The title above the photos, such as “Recent work near Maple Falls”.

2. Album slug. The album to show. Type the album’s slug and only that album’s photos appear. Leave it empty and every album shows, which is not what you want on a town page.

An album’s slug is on the right when you have that album open. It is the album title in lower case with dashes, such as bayview-street-remodel.

Then click Publish.

What Google shows

The panel on the right has an SEO section, the same one every page has. Pages explains each box.

Two things are worth knowing about town pages:

• Leave SEO Title empty and your heading is used, with your business name after it.
• Leave Meta Description empty and your Short intro is used.

So filling in the heading and the intro well is most of the job. Only reach for the SEO boxes when you want different wording there.

Where the page shows up

At its own address. “Maple Falls” lives at yoursite.com/service-areas/maple-falls.

The heading, the intro and the photo all come from the form.

On your Service Areas page. Every town page you publish is listed there on its own, as a card with the photo and the intro. You do not have to add it.

In a Service Areas block. The same cards can also show partway down another page, such as your home page. Pages shows how blocks are added.

The order town pages appear in

The Sort order box at the bottom of the form sets it. The lowest number goes first, and an empty box counts as zero. Two towns with the same number fall back to A to Z.

Featured is a switch next to it. On its own it changes nothing. It only matters when a Service Areas block is set to show featured towns only.

Taking a town page down

Warning

Both of the buttons below take the page off your website the moment you click. Its address stops working, and its card vanishes from your Service Areas page. Any link or search result pointing at it lands on nothing.

Unpublish Service Area Page hides it and keeps it. Publishing brings it back word for word.

Move to Trash is for a page you are done with. It goes to the Trash tab, so you can still get it back.

Saving and publishing covers both.