Home services is a competitive industry. With relatively low barriers to entry, anyone can claim to be a reputable home services provider in your community. But you’re licensed, insured, and established, and you’re wondering how to leverage Google local SEO for service area businesses. You want to dominate a local service area and become the top choice that can charge what your services are worth.
You’re in the right place.
Why Dominating Your Service Area Is Important
Whatever your specialty—be it roofing, HVAC, remodeling, or pool installation—standing out in local search results is a top priority.
When potential customers search for services in their area, your business needs to not just visible. It needs to have that gleam that says, we’re the best choice around—without having to say it.
To this end, optimizing your service area for local searches ensures that your business appears prominently when and where it matters most.
You don’t have to appear in another town or across the country where people will never hire you. You need a local presence—reaching the right people right here in your community.
…Or communities if you serve several areas.
Yes, you can do this for each of those and grow your local home services company into a regional success story.
Now, let’s get into it.
1. Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
You have several online review profiles to choose from. But for a local services business, GBP is the top priority. Google directs an estimated 90% of search traffic. So, optimizing this one asset can drastically improve your service area dominance.
Not only can it increase visibility, but your GBP profile becomes a hub for the more important information about your company: hours, services, pricing, booking and that 5-star reputation.
Take these steps to optimize it in as little as 24 hours.
- Complete All Information: Make sure your business name, address, phone number, website, and hours are accurate and consistent across all platforms.
- Select Appropriate Categories: Choose categories that accurately represent your services, such as “HVAC Contractor” or “Roofing Company.”
- Add High-Quality Photos: Upload images showcasing your work, team, and completed projects to build trust with potential customers. Bonus: Encourage your customers to upload images with their reviews. Now, that’s powerful word-of-mouth!
- Encourage Reviews: Ask customers to leave reviews, and respond to them professionally to show you listen to your customers.
- Maintain a Posting Schedule: Perhaps weekly, add a simple update about projects, employee achievements, local media mention, awards, and local event or charity participation to demonstrate your connectedness in the community. Make your profile look “lived in” rather than just something you set up over the weekend and then forgot about.
For more detailed guidance, refer to our recent tutorial: Google Business Profile Tips for Home Services Contractors.
2. Define Your Service Area Accurately
Don’t be afraid to appear small and local. Trying to look like you serve half the state when you’re only really in 2-3 towns or a few communities within a city isn’t going to help you dominate in your most lucrative service areas.
Be proud of the communities you serve. Focus here. Dominate here. Then grow organically from the reputation you’ve built here.
How to Set Your Service Area on Google
- Specify Cities or ZIP Codes: List all the areas you serve in your GBP to target those specific locales. But don’t go overboard. You did one job in Tampa that one time…that doesn’t count.
- Regularly Update: As your service areas change, keep your GBP updated to reflect these adjustments.
- Target the Service Areas with Other Marketing: Double-down and reinforce your online and IRL presence with complementary local marketing strategies.
- Avoid Overextending: Focus on areas within a reasonable distance to ensure relevance and avoid diluting your presence (or emptying your gas tank) by trying to travel too far from home base, until you’ve built a solid reputation where you are. While it’s true we don’t know our neighbors like we used to, we are still more likely to see and believe people in our communities when they recommend a home services company.
Learn more about localizing your Google Profile here.
3. Implement Local Schema Markup
Local schema markup is a type of structured data you put on your website to help search engines understand your business’s location and services. This allows them to display that information in a way that’s very useful to potential customers.
Local Schema Markup benefits you and your customers in so many ways:
- Provide easy-to-find and process information in search results, such as ratings, service areas, hours, pricing, and contact information.
- Help search engines accurately index your business for local searches because they know where you are. That’s important because your website host could be in a different state or country. Search engines only know where you are if you clearly communicate your location in many places.
- Can lead to higher click-through rates by providing detailed information directly in search results and building instant trust with strangers.
4. Add Your Business to Google Maps
Many contractors want to know how to be easily found on Google Maps. The truth is, if you’ve followed the steps so far, it’s already there.
Google Maps is prime real estate in the search results for a local services business. It’s a very visual representation of where you are in proximity to your customers. The optimizations you’ve completed on your Google business profile will help you appear higher on the numbered list of service providers in your category.
To get your business on Google Maps:
- Ensure your GBP is verified and up-to-date, which automatically adds your business to Google Maps.
- Specify your service areas to appear in relevant searches, even if you don’t have a physical storefront.
- Encourage reviews and build your 5-star reputation. Your business name appears with this star level and number of reviews in Map results, and can build instant trust with strangers.
For more information on optimizing your visibility on your local service area maps, check out this post next: How to Get Your Remodeling Business Featured in Google’s Local Map Pack.
5. Ensure Consistency Across All Online Listings
Consistency = confidence that you are where you say you are. So, make sure that all directories and listings for your business have your current information.
It’s a good idea to audit your information on directory listings, media references, and social media platforms. Something as small as a missing Suite #, slightly different Doing Business As (D.B.A.), or extension on your zip code could reduce both search engine and local client confidence.
If you change your business hours or contact information, update it everywhere it’s listed.
This can be quite a feat.
Fortunately, directory management tools exist that can help you manage thousands of these references all in one place. They can save you many hours over the lifetime of your business.
We discuss this further in Winning the Neighborhood: Local Business Listing Strategies for Home Service Contractors.
6. Create Localized Content
Develop content that resonates with the audience in your service areas. This is a great way to engage your community and demonstrate your connection to it.
Not sure what kind of content to create? Consider these starters.
Use a local keyword research tool to find out what kind of related content people are looking for. If you’re a roofer and everyone is talking about a certain type of roofing material, installation method, or style, that’s local content.
Also, consider blogging about local events. Share your involvement in community happenings or local projects.
Get involved with local charities so you can share that content too. Local festivals, landmarks, beloved businesses, building projects, and neighborhood celebrities can all become the topic of a quick local post.
Nothing long or fancy needed. Just real.
Network with non-competing but complementary businesses, like an electrician with a plumber to host an event, and make your own news-worthy, localized content.
Bonus points if you can get your employees involved in local happenings so you can showcase their involvement.
This kind of content pays you back through improved visibility in your service area. So, it’s worth some bonus pay.
As you discuss local events, be sure to incorporate the names of the town, community, local landmarks, etc. Most cities have a Main Street and a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, too, so you have to be more localized than that to Unlock Local Leads.
Local Dominance. Unlimited Growth.
The best home services companies are truly home-grown. They start locally, build a reputation, and then expand into new markets.
Focus on building your localized online presence where you have the most customers. Let their amazing customer experiences become a magnet to attract leads in their neighborhood and then beyond.
The internet seems vast. But it’s really just billions of local online communities built around physical ones. And you can be a part of that. That’s the secret.
Find out how an all-in-one local marketing platform can help. Schedule a Surefire Local Demo.