Local SEO for Contractors: Show Up When People Search Nearby

Local SEO for contractors comes down to what Google says local results are mainly based on: how well your profile matches the search, how far you are from the person searching, and how well known the business is. Google publishes that in plain words, with the rules for the profile itself. This guide takes those pages in order, profile first, website second.

How Google ranks local results: relevance, distance and prominence

Google's help page on local ranking names three factors. Relevance is how well a profile matches what someone searched for, which is why Google asks for complete and detailed business information. Distance is how far each business is from the customer searching; when the customer does not share a location, Google uses what it knows about where they are. Prominence is how well known a business is; Google says it is also based on how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help the ranking.

You cannot buy a place in the map results; Google states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Distance is set by where the searcher stands, so the work is in relevance and prominence.

Set up the Business Profile the way Google's guidelines ask

Google's guidelines for representing a business cover the name, address, service area, categories, phone, website and hours. Each has a rule; read them as requirements.

The name: your real name, nothing added

The name must be the business's real-world name, the one on the truck, the website and the invoices. Google does not allow taglines, service descriptions, towns, phone numbers, web addresses or product keywords in the name field. Smith Paving is the name; Smith Paving Sealcoating and Striping Springfield is a violation, however good those words look in a result.

Verify it and show the right address

Google lists verification first among the ways to improve local ranking, since it confirms you are authorized to represent the business, and photos appear only after the profile is verified. A contractor who works at the customer's property and does not serve people at the office should remove the address and enter only the service area, which is Google's guidance for a service-area business. A shop where customers walk in and crews also go out is a hybrid and can show both.

Google Business Profile service area: towns, not a radius

The service area is set by town, postal code or a similar area, never as a radius around the shop, and you can list up to 20 of them within about 2 hours of driving time from where the business is based. A business that visits customers has one profile for its whole service area. Approved edits can take up to 48 hours to show.

Google Business Profile categories: specific, and as few as fit

Google states that the categories you select affect your local ranking. Choose a primary category that best describes the business, the specific one over the general one where it exists. Additional categories are for special departments or services; Google says not to select a category for every product or service, and to use a few from its list instead. The guideline's test is that a category completes the sentence this business IS a, not this business HAS a. Hours, phone and website round it out: regular customer-facing hours, a local number the business controls, and its own website rather than a social page.

Google reviews for contractors: ask, reply, never pay

Google's ranking page says it outright: more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking, and replying to reviews shows that you value their feedback. Its advice on getting them: ask customers to visit a review link or scan a QR code. They need a Google Account to post.

What you cannot do is just as clear. Offering free or discounted goods or services for a review, a changed review or a removed one is prohibited as fake and misleading content. Ask every customer the day the job is finished, with the link and nothing attached. See how to get Google reviews as a contractor for the full rules, including the US federal rule on fake reviews.

Reply to all of them, short, direct and prompt. For a negative review, Google's guidance is to acknowledge a mistake you made without taking the blame for what was outside your control, explain what you can and cannot do, apologize where it fits, sign with your name and respond promptly.

Photos: the work, the crew, every finished job

Google lists adding photos and videos among its ways to improve local ranking. For a contractor that means work in progress and work finished: the lot before and after striping, the lawn after the first cut, the crew on site. Google's photo tips ask for at least three photos representative of the services you offer and at least three of the team, in focus, well lit, without heavy filters or alterations, and true to life.

A phone meets the limits: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, at least 250 px on each side; videos up to 30 seconds.

Service area pages: one page per service and one per town

A profile holds only so much. The website is where a contractor can say, on one page each, sealcoating in Springfield and parking lot striping in Shelbyville. Google's starter guide asks for pages that are easy to read and well organized, written for people, original and kept up to date, with web addresses that include words useful to the reader. A page per service and a page per town meets that, as long as each says something true and particular: the service, the towns, a photo from a job there, the price basis, how to ask for a quote. What pages a contractor website needs lays out the full set.

Do not copy one page ten times with the town name swapped; Google's guide says not to copy content, in part or in whole. A short town page with one honest paragraph, a job photo and a request form beats a padded one. Link the pages to each other with link text that names the destination, since Google finds the vast majority of new pages through links.

A site from the MakeHay Website add-on has a page per service and per town served, and its contact page is the request form, so a lead lands in Requests with the customer's details, the job site address and photos. Help your website show up in Google covers what the owner fills in.

Page titles and descriptions: one distinct title per page

Every page needs a title element; Google lists it first among the sources it draws on for the title link people see in results, with the page's visible heading among the others. Its advice: descriptive and concise, no vague labels such as Home, no keyword stuffing, and distinct text on each page rather than repeated boilerplate, which Google says it may rewrite. Put the business name at the start or end, set off with a hyphen, colon or pipe. Sealcoating in Springfield, then the business name, does the job; the business name alone on every page does not.

The meta description is the text under the title. Google builds the snippet mostly from the page itself and uses the description when it sums the page up better. Write one per page that summarizes the whole page; Google sets no length limit but says identical descriptions across pages are not helpful and a long string of keywords is less likely to be shown.

Local business structured data: tell Google who and where you are

Structured data is a block of code on the page that states the business facts in a form Google reads directly. The LocalBusiness type requires a name and a postal address, and recommends the phone number, the page's web address, the coordinates, the opening hours and a price range. Google asks for the most specific LocalBusiness type that fits rather than the general one.

Google says the markup can go on any page but makes more sense on a page with information about the business, and offers the Rich Results Test to check it. Google does not guarantee that a result feature built on structured data will appear; what the markup does is state, in a form machines read, who the page belongs to and where that business is.

NAP consistency: the same name, address and phone everywhere

NAP stands for name, address, phone. Prominence, in Google's description, counts how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has, so the profile, the website, the structured data and every directory listing should read as one business: the same name with nothing added, the same address written the same way (or none, if the profile hides it), the same local phone number under the business's direct control, as the guidelines require.

Do the audit once: open the profile, the website footer, the contact page and every directory the business was ever listed in, and change each to match the profile. On a MakeHay site the phone, email, address and hours come from Settings, and the Google reviews shown on the site refresh weekly, so the site and the profile stay in step.

What to do this week, in order

1. 1Step 1: Claim and verify the profile; hide the address if customers never come to it, set the service area by town, pick the specific primary category.
2. 2Step 2: Fill in hours, phone, website and description, with nothing in the name field but the name.
3. 3Step 3: Add at least three photos of the services you offer and three of the team, then one from each finished job.
4. 4Step 4: Ask every finished customer for a review with the link, and reply to each. MakeHay sends the review request by email on a schedule you set.
5. 5Step 5: Write the service pages and the town pages, each with its own title and description.
6. 6Step 6: Add LocalBusiness structured data and check it with the Rich Results Test.
7. 7Step 7: Match the name, address and phone everywhere.

Then wait. Google's starter guide says every change takes time to show, some in hours and some in months, and suggests checking back after a few weeks before changing course.