As a Service Area Business (SAB) business are you at a disadvantage when it comes to ranking online? It’s kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg? According to Google, though, a Service Area Business is not at a disadvantage to a normal brick and mortar storefront location. But who actually believes Google anyway?
It has become increasingly common for small business owners that provide at-home services to operate out of their home and forego the expense of renting a space. In fact, we work with quite a few of these businesses, such as pest control, plumbing, window cleaning, tree trimming, and a number of others, that are very successful and prefer not to showcase their home address in a GMB listing. And even though most people would consider them to be at a disadvantage when it comes to maps rankings, by using a solid strategy and sound SEO principles we’ve been able to help them rank at the top and dominate their markets.
Making Local SEO Work For Service Area Businesses
If you’re a local business owner that provides services to your clients at their location here are a couple of things to look at that will help you increase your visibility online and win a few more new clients.
Optimize Google My Business
First, if you haven’t made any recent updates or added any new information to your Google My Business (GMB) listing, then you need to now. Google looks at every listing as somewhat like a news outlet. If the news you show is 2 years old, then you’re not very relevant today. Jump into your listing and respond to any reviews you have. Simple, effective and valued by Google because it shows the interaction between your business and the consumers that use you. And, it shows recent activity on your listing. You’ve just become relevant again.
Secondly here’s a great tip that will have a real impact on your business, is simple to do, yet is overlooked by most. Go take some pictures of the recent jobs you’ve completed or are working on right now. Why? Because contained within the bits and bytes of that digital photo is information called EXIF data. This little piece of data contains information about the location (GPS coordinates, lat./long.) where the photo was taken and Google can read that data. Once you post those photos to your GMB profile Google now has proof that you serve customers in that area. Keep doing that all across town and now you have a stack of proof that you are relevant ALL ACROSS town.
And last of all, if you haven’t turned on GMB’s text-to-message feature in GMB, then you should do it now. You might need to download Google’s messaging app in order to run this, but it’s worth the 2-minute hassle. In our fast paced world customers are constantly looking for the fastest way to make contact and get their questions answered in the way most convenient to them. That usually means text and if you have the feature activated and your competitors don’t, then guess who they’ll likely reach out to first!
If you feel like you’ve been at a disadvantage as a service area business, then put these quick steps into practice and you’ll see the results. We do it for our clients and we know it works. If you think there is a larger obstacle stopping your business from getting the visibility to succeed in your area, then feel free to reach out to one of our experts for a one-on-one Local Visibility Audit and we’ll get you on track to dominate your market in no time.