What the three names in the map pack did that you have not done yet
Local SEO for contractors is the work of showing up when someone in your service area searches for your trade, mostly in the map results and the few listings under them. Google says it ranks those results on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot move your shop closer to every customer, so the work is relevance and prominence: a complete Google Business Profile, a page for each service, town pages that mean something, reviews that keep coming, and listings that agree with each other.
None of it is complicated. Most of it is unfinished on the profiles and sites we look at. This is the order we would tackle it for a crew working Charlotte, Rock Hill or Charleston.
How Google decides who shows up
Google Business Profile Help lists three factors for local results: relevance, distance and prominence.
- Relevance is whether your business matches the search. Someone types "roof repair" and your profile says "general contractor", the roofer down the road is more relevant than you.
- Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the town they typed.
- Prominence is how well known you are: reviews, links from other sites, listings in directories, mentions around the web.
Distance you live with. The other two are a to-do list.
Finish your Google Business Profile first
This is the single biggest lever for a contractor, it is free, and the version we usually find is half done.
- Primary category: the one that names the job you most want calls for. Add secondary categories for work you actually do. Do not pad.
- Service area: the towns you will drive to, listed as towns. If you will not take a job in Gastonia, leave Gastonia off.
- Phone, hours and website: identical to what the site says. A different number on the profile and the site makes both look shaky.
- Photos: your finished jobs, your truck, your crew. A few new ones every month.
The full walkthrough is in Google Business Profile basics. If you are showing up but low, how to rank higher on Google Maps goes step by step.
Give every service its own page
One "Services" page with ten bullets will not rank for any of the ten. When somebody searches "tankless water heater install", Google wants to send them to a page about tankless water heater installs.
So each main service gets a page. What the job involves, who it is for, what changes the price, how to get an estimate, photos of that kind of work. Write it the way you would explain it standing in the customer's driveway.
You do not need a page for every small task. Start with the work that pays and the work you want more of.
Write town pages that could only be about that town
Working Charlotte, Concord, Matthews and Fort Mill? A page for each helps you show up there, if it is about the town.
Swapping the city name into the same six paragraphs fools nobody, and Google has become good at ignoring those pages. A useful town page says which county's permit office you deal with, what the housing stock looks like there, how long it takes you to get there in I-77 traffic, and a job you did nearby if you have one.
Ask for reviews every month
Reviews feed prominence, and they are what a homeowner reads before calling anyway. Two things count more than the total number. A steady flow, since a few new reviews a month looks healthier than twenty in one week and then silence. And replies to every one, good or bad, because the reply is written for the next person reading it.
The easiest routine is a text with your review link the day the job wraps up. The wording and the policy rules are in how to get more Google reviews.
Make your listings agree
Your name, address and phone sit on dozens of sites you did not put them on: Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, the BBB, Angi, the chamber. Those are citations. When they disagree (an old cell number, the address from before you moved the shop, "Co." on one and "Company" on another), Google gets a muddier picture of you and some customers call a dead line.
You do not need hundreds. You need the main ones correct and matching. The list we start from is in local citations.
Let the website do its job
The site has about three seconds on a phone to show a number they can tap, a way to get a price, and proof you are real. If those are not on the first screen, the search work leaks. We wrote up what a contractor website needs on the first screen, and the build itself is covered under contractor website design.
Quick checks:
- Loads fast on a phone over cell signal
- Every page title names the service and the town
- Phone number is a tap-to-call button
- A short form for the people who will not call
What local SEO for contractors does not need
- Buying reviews or writing your own. Google removes them, and sometimes the profile with them.
- A footer with forty town names in a row.
- Paid submission to hundreds of directories. The big ones matter; the long tail mostly does not.
- Pages for keywords nobody in your area searches. Check demand before you build.
How long it takes
Profile fixes can show within weeks. Ranking new pages in a competitive city takes months of steady work, and anyone promising a position by a date is guessing. What a shop can honestly promise is to show you what was done each month and what moved.
In short
- Google ranks the map on relevance, distance and prominence. Work the first and third.
- Finish the Google Business Profile before anything else.
- One page per service, one honest page per town.
- Reviews monthly, listings matching, phone number on the first screen.
FAQ
What does local SEO for contractors include?
Your Google Business Profile, a page for each service, town pages where you work, a steady flow of reviews, and matching listings on other sites. Backlinks and blog posts help with prominence once the basics are done.
Can I do local SEO myself?
Yes. Claiming the profile, asking for reviews and fixing listings are all owner-sized tasks. The hard part is keeping it up every month while running jobs, which is where most owners stop.
Do I need a website for local SEO?
You can appear on the map with only a profile. A website with service and town pages gives Google more to rank and gives the customer a reason to pick you over the next pin.
How much does local SEO cost?
With us, your Google Business Profile is kept current on every plan from $199 a month. Profile optimization, 3 backlinks a month, 10 tracked keywords and 2 blog posts start on Grow at $499. Lead at $999 adds city pages, 6 backlinks, 20 keywords and 8 posts. Details on the local SEO page.
Want us to look at yours
Send your business name and the towns you work, and you get back a price and the first three things we would fix. We reply within one business day.
Or call (980) 983-7429, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 Eastern. Our AI receptionist answers, takes your details, and the team calls you back.