Local SEO for local businesses: service plus place
If you work locally, you do not compete on “heat pump” but on “heat pump Nijmegen”. Why that combination is the core, and how to cover it across your whole region.
If you work in a region, the national search term is almost never your fight. On “heat pump” you are up against comparison sites and manufacturers. On “heat pump installation Nijmegen” you are up against three businesses from your own town.
The second one can be won, and the people searching that way are further along too: they are not reading, they are choosing.
Why service plus place works
Google knows that someone who types a service and a place is looking for a business, not an explanation. That is why local businesses often come out on top for those searches, with the map alongside. There is less competition, and the competition there is sits near you.
Count how many combinations you have: four services and ten towns in your area make forty search terms. Each with less competition than the national version, and each with people who are almost customers.
Not forty copies of the same page
This is where it usually goes wrong. The temptation is to copy one page forty times and only swap the town name. That no longer works and it can actively hurt you: Google recognises pages like that and treats them as filler.
A local page that does work has something to say about that place:
- Projects you really did there, with a photo and a year.
- Something about the houses there: pre-war buildings need different solutions from new builds.
- The local council schemes or grants that apply there.
- Travel time, and whether you can be there within a day.
If you have never worked in a town, do not make a page for it either. Write about the places where you do have something to say first, and expand as new projects come in.
Your Google Business Profile is half the work
For local searches Google shows a map with three businesses above the results. You do not get in there with a blog, but with a fully completed Google Business Profile: the right category, real opening hours, photos, your services, and reviews.
The two strengthen each other. The profile gets you into the map, the pages get you into the ordinary results below it. Have both and you appear twice.
Make sure your name, address and phone number are exactly the same everywhere: on your site, in your profile, in directories. Differences make Google unsure which business you are.
How long it takes
Local search terms are usually quicker to win than national ones, simply because there is less competition. But it is not a matter of days. Expect weeks before a new local page gets impressions, and months before it reaches the top three.
What you do see in the meantime is in which towns it goes quickly and in which it does not. That usually comes down to how many businesses in that town are fighting over the same search term, and you only find that out by trying.
