What local SEO means for a trade business
When a homeowner in New Port Richey types “ac repair near me” into Google, the page has three parts that matter. At the top are the Local Services Ads, the paid cards with the Google Verified badge. Under them is the map pack: three businesses pinned on a map. Under the map are the regular web results. Local SEO is the work that earns the map pack and the web results, the two spots you do not pay for per click.
Three kinds of searches pay the bills. “Near me” searches, where Google leans hard on distance. City plus service searches, like “water heater repair hudson fl”. And the after-hours emergency: the burst pipe at 11 at night, when the first company that answers gets the job. A good plan builds for all three.
We covered the basics in our guide to local SEO for home service companies, and the profile side in our Google Business Profile guide. This page is what we actually do about them, month after month.
How the map pack decides who shows up
Google says local results come down to three things. Every task on our list feeds at least one of them.
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Prominence
How well known and trusted Google thinks you are. Reviews, links from other local sites, mentions around the web and an active profile all count.
We doReview requests after every job, a reply to every review, local link outreach and clean listings.
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Relevance
How well your profile and your site match the search. Your categories, your services list, and pages that describe the job in plain words.
We doThe right categories for your trade, a page for each service, and copy about the real job.
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Proximity Google calls it distance
How close your office is to the person searching. It is the one factor nobody can fake, and the one that trips up most promises.
We doWe cannot move your building. We win the towns around it with real service area pages and strong reviews, and we tell you straight how far one office can reach.
What is included every month
Local SEO is custom priced after a free audit, but the work itself follows the same list for every shop:
- Google Business Profile optimization: categories, services, photos and posts, plus a check for edits you did not make
- One new city or service page a month until the site is built out
- Blog posts that answer the questions your customers actually ask
- Citation and NAP cleanup, so your name, address and phone match everywhere Google looks
- A review request system your techs will use, and a reply to every review
- Local link outreach: real emails to real local sites, suppliers and community groups
- Technical upkeep: speed, broken links, schema, and internal links on keyword text
- Call tracking with a number for each source, matched to booked jobs
If your current site is what is holding you back, we can rebuild it. That is our contractor web design work, and it is how the three sites below were built.
City and service pages, without doorway pages
Plenty of agencies sell a stack of city pages where only the town name changes. Google calls those doorway pages, and its spam policies are written to push them down. We do not build them.
We build one page for each town you really work in, and only when we have something true to say about it. How old the houses are and what that means for the pipes or the ductwork. The utility and the permit office. Which roads your trucks take to get there. How storm season hits that stretch of the coast.
Farrell Air Conditioning is a good example. Its site gives each office, Port Richey and Spring Hill, its own set of service pages, and it has a page for each real town it covers. You can see how it is built in the HVAC SEO case study.
Farrell Air Conditioning is a Team Farrell company, and Rankd grew out of Team Farrell.
Reporting on booked jobs, not rankings
A ranking report tells you where you showed up. It does not tell you if the phone rang, or if the call turned into a job. So every client gets the same setup we built for Team Farrell, and a monthly report that answers five questions:
| The question | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Which source made the phone ring? | A CallRail number for your Business Profile, your website and each ad channel |
| Did the call book a job? | Each call matched to its job in Housecall Pro |
| What did that job cost to win? | What you spent on the source, divided by the jobs it booked |
| Where do we show up? | Map pack scans and Google Search Console |
| What did Rankd do this month? | A plain list of pages, posts, profile and citation work |
Cost per booked job is the number we steer by. We explain why in cost per booked job, and how every call gets its source in our guide to call tracking. We also built the Marketing Tracker to do this matching for our own shops, and it is now sold on its own.
Honest timing, and no promised rankings
Local SEO takes months, not weeks. Fixes to your Business Profile and your tracking can help early. New pages, reviews, citations and links take longer to build up, and they keep paying off after that. A shop with a thin site in a crowded market will wait longer than a shop with a good site in a quiet one.
We also will not guarantee a spot in the map pack. Google decides who shows up there, and it changes the results all the time. What we can control is the work, and whether you can see it.
Nobody can promise a ranking. We promise the work, and we show you the calls.
Who this is for, and who it is not for
A good fit
- Plumbing, HVAC, roofing and electrical companies with a real office near the towns they want to win
- Owners who want to know what each booked job cost them
- Shops with the trucks and the crew to take on more work
Not a fit yet
- Nobody answers the phone during business hours. More calls will only mean more voicemails, and we have written about what a missed call costs.
- You want a guaranteed number one ranking. We cannot promise it, and neither can anyone else.
- You need leads next week. Start with Local Services Ads and add SEO when you can wait for it.
Each trade gets its own plan. Read about SEO for plumbers, HVAC SEO, SEO for roofers and electrician SEO.
How local SEO is priced
Local SEO is custom priced after a free audit. We do not post a price list, because the work for a one-office plumber in Hudson is not the work for an HVAC company with offices in two counties. What sets the scope: how many offices and towns you want to win, how many service pages your site still needs, how crowded your searches are, and how much cleanup your profile and listings need. The audit is free, and there is nothing to sign.
