Local SEO for Service Businesses

Local SEO for a service business comes down to the three things Google says drive local results: relevance, distance and prominence. You can't move your office closer to every customer, so the work goes into relevance and prominence, through a complete Google Business Profile, a real page for each area you serve, a steady flow of reviews and mentions from local organizations.

How local search ranks businesses

When someone searches "accountant near me" or "HVAC company in Austin", Google's help page on local ranking says the results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence.

Relevance is how well your Business Profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching, and when they don't say where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location. Prominence is how well known you are, which Google says draws on things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.

Distance is out of your hands. Relevance and prominence aren't, and that's where local SEO happens.

The Business Profile most owners leave half finished

Google Business Profile, called Google My Business until 2021, is the first place to work. Most service businesses have one, and plenty have left it half filled out, untouched for months and showing whatever photos customers happened to upload.

A complete profile has the right categories, a description of up to 750 characters that names your main services plainly, a service area that matches where you work, photos of your work or premises and a steady flow of reviews. Google says complete and detailed information helps it match your business to relevant searches.

Choosing your primary category

Your primary category tells Google what kind of business you are. Pick the term your buyers search for rather than how you describe yourself internally, such as "Plumber" rather than "Home Services Provider", or "Family Law Attorney" rather than "Legal Services". Google's Business Profile guidelines ask you to choose the fewest categories that describe your core business, so add secondary ones sparingly.

A real page for each area you serve

A general page titled "Roofing Services" struggles to rank for "roofing company Dallas", because nothing on it says Dallas. If you serve several cities, each one you want to rank in needs its own page.

Those pages have to differ from one another. Google's spam policies treat sets of near-identical pages built to rank for similar searches, including pages aimed at specific cities, as doorway abuse. Twenty city pages that only swap the city name fit that description.

What each city page needs

Put the city in the title tag and H1. Then write about the service in that place: the neighborhoods you cover, local rules or permits that apply, the problems the climate or housing stock causes, and how quickly you reach customers there. Add a local phone number if you have one, a map of your service area and testimonials from clients in that city. Write each page for a buyer in that city, and don't pad it to reach a word count.

Reviews: the part of local SEO most businesses avoid

Reviews matter to buyers and to Google. Google's help page says it directly: "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." It doesn't publish a target number, so judge yours against the businesses you compete with in the map results.

Recency matters to buyers as well. A profile whose newest review is two years old leaves a buyer wondering whether the business is still open, so aim for a steady flow rather than a burst.

How to ask for reviews without begging

Send one message after every finished job, within a couple of days, with a direct link to your review form, and send one reminder at most. Built into your email or CRM so it goes out every time, it keeps reviews arriving month after month without anyone having to remember.

Ask every client the same way. Google's review policy doesn't allow businesses to offer incentives for reviews or to "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers".

Consistent business details

Your business name, address and phone number, often shortened to NAP, should read the same on your website, your Business Profile and every directory that lists you, such as Yelp, the Better Business Bureau and your local chamber. A different suite number, an old phone line or a shortened business name sends buyers to the wrong place and gives Google a muddled picture of your business.

Search your business name, open the first 10 results that mention you and fix any mismatch by claiming and updating the listing. It's dull work. It's also quick.

Local links that carry weight

Google counts links from other websites toward prominence. For a local business, the links worth having come from local news, business associations, chambers of commerce and regional trade bodies, while mass directory submissions add little.

You earn them by taking part. Join the associations for your trade in your state, sponsor or speak at local events, and pitch a story to regional outlets when you have one worth telling. One article about your business in a local paper does more than a stack of directory listings.

Once your local pages are live, plan the content around them. The keyword cluster approach turns a handful of city pages into a connected set that covers your topic, instead of a scatter of disconnected listings.