How Local Search Services Can Boost Your Business

Marketing your lawn care or pest control business can seem like an overwhelming burden. It can feel like every opportunity has been explored and dreamt up. You also may feel like every market is oversaturated, with little room for your field service business to stand out. However, there are tools that you can take advantage of to give you that edge over your competition. And it might be the difference between profitability and insolvency. 

You’ve used it, we’ve used it, but you might be unaware of how essential local search services are to a business’s livelihood. In fact, “near me” searches surged by more than 90 percent over the past two years. Better yet, 88 percent of mobile searches for local companies had people on the phone within the day. There’s even the possibility you’re reading this today because you searched “local SEO company near me.”

Without local search optimization services and social media integration, a solid marketing plan isn’t complete. It’s imperative that you ensure that your company has a digital presence.

Let’s dig into how a local search engine optimization service can maximize your search rankings and visibility on Google.

What Is Local SEO?

The term “local SEO” means what you’d expect it to mean. Your web presence is optimized with local search services so that local search engine users will find you.

Search engine optimization (SEO) geared toward boosting the visibility of small, locally-based companies is at the heart of local search engine marketing.

Giant corporations, big box stores, and small companies benefit from local search marketing. The goal is to ensure that clients searching for the product or service you’re offering find your company at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Local SEO is necessary whether you’re running a small family-owned lawn care company or just running side gigs for extra income. 

Customers’ journeys can’t be conceptualized without online and offline touchpoints. You can’t have one without the other if you want to make the most of your local search marketing efforts.  

Why Is Local SEO Important?

Having a solid local search presence is essential for every business, no matter how many locations you have. It will help your company generate more leads and sales. Therefore, it is crucial to incorporate local SEO into your complete SEO plan.

One thing that all SEO tools have in common is that they are designed to help you improve your website’s local search rankings. Anyone that owns or serves a physical place will reap the benefits of local SEO. Your local SEO strategy should focus on getting your company to appear in Google’s map pack — the three business listings that show when a prospect searches using relevant keywords.

So, what’s the significance of local search:

• 45 percent of all Google searches are for local companies

• 95 percent of consumers use their mobile devices to do local searches

• Of those consumers, 61 percent called, and 59 percent visited the businesses they found in the results.

Google’s ‘Local Pack’ is the ultimate goal of local search marketing. That box with the three establishments, a map, and a few dropped pins appears at the top of the search results page. It’s no surprise that the links towards the bottom of the page attract more attention and, as a result, more consumers.

Getting a company into the top three is a huge challenge. Local optimization is the first step to a successful SEO strategy, and understanding how it works and how to leverage it are the first steps.

However, you should be familiar with local search engine optimization basics. It’s also critical to understand how it varies from more traditional forms of search engine optimization.

For instance, by incorporating a robust local search service, you can:

• Improve your online presence and engagement with your target demographic

• Track rankings

• Analyze competitive data

• Help you generate SEO-optimized keywords.

• Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)

• Develop insights from local SEO analysis

• Aids in influencing consumer choices 

• Builds brand trust

Even if you don’t have a website, local SEO will help your company pop out and attract more customers through internet leads.

You can expect a high conversion rate because these leads come from potential prospects who are explicitly looking for your company’s services.

How Does Google Rank Search Results? 

The purpose of the Google SERP is to keep you on Google.com and not take you anywhere else. Google’s answer to your query is now clearly posted right on the page if you haven’t noticed. Staying on Google’s online domains generates more revenue for the search giant. Google can serve ads more frequently, and it can gather more data.

On Google, most people search for business information. The sheer volume of potential clients implies that you should handle your business’s Google page the same way you would treat your company’s website. 

After entering a search term, Google analyzes various website signals, or ranking variables, such as the amount of relevant content on a site, to produce a list of results. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to create a Google listing that Google will want to promote. It’s significantly more challenging to get your listing to appear above similar businesses, requiring training in local SEO plans.

How Does Local SEO Work?

Most people don’t understand that when they put anything into Google’s search box, they aren’t conducting a real-time search of the whole internet. A cached duplicate of all the sites that Google has identified (called the Google Index) is being searched. 

To build the index, Google utilizes “spiders,” which are little programs that explore the web. To find information, each spider follows the same process. It begins on a single page, then follows links to other pages, etc.

The spiders continually crawl an innumerable number of pages per second at a mind-boggling speed. Crawled content is saved on Google’s servers, and an index is created as it is gathered. New sites and links are quickly identified, which keeps the index current.

It can be challenging to understand how Google ranks businesses. Thanks to a complex set of algorithms, Google can scan and index tens of thousands of sites in only a few seconds. Companies that match a search are returned by an algorithm that crawls websites and provides the results. 

Websites and listings that fit your search criteria are determined by analyzing various factors, both on and off-site. A list of all relevant search results is compiled, and the results are then sorted according to importance.

It is essential to optimize your local SEO for a service area and ensure that all necessary information is included to increase your SEO. According to Google, the three most critical factors are:

Relevance

The key marker refers to how relevant a local listing is to a user’s search. By providing more information about your company, Google will be able to match your listing to relevant queries better.

Distance

Google accounts for how far away each company is from the search parameters’ location. Without providing an area, Google uses the information it has about the user to estimate the customer’s distance.

Prominence

According to Google’s data, how well-known a company is among the general public (like links, articles, and directories) relates to its prominence. The number and quality of a company’s Google review ratings are also considered when determining its local search ranking.

How Can FieldRoutes Help?

Route optimization, website design, marketing, and the overall client experience are all things to keep in mind while running a field services company. From a single, unique dashboard, FieldRoutes provides everything you need from a local SEO solution:

Optimize Your Google My Business (GBM)

All of the web directories you’ve enrolled in your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) should be consistent. The Local Pack may not include your company if there are any inconsistencies.

Responsive Sites

Responsive web design ensures that your site will appear in the best format possible no matter what device or screen size a user is using.

Local Search Services

With the right tools, tactics, and plans, you can rise to the top of the search engine rankings in your region.

Marketing Campaigns

Educate, entertain, and direct prospects to your website with relevant, helpful material.

Brand Management

Build your company’s reputation with effective communications and landing sites.

Utilize The Best Local SEO Software With FieldRoutes

FieldRoutes, a ServiceTitan company, is more than a software company. We’re also a member of your team, ready to provide marketing support for your field service business. As a leading lawn care and pest control SEO company, we are prepared to improve your search rankings and take your marketing efforts to the next level. Contact us today and get your business found using the best local SEO software!