Your Location is Google’s Baseline, Not Maximum
Most electricians have an interesting experience when they start following their local listings. They type their business name and electrician into Google, and it’s there. Then they drive a 20-minute drive to the next suburb and do the same search, but they’re nowhere in sight. Another guy has replaced them in the #1 spot – a competitor that isn’t much better than them, but has an address two streets away from the searcher. That stings. And it’s not broken. It’s proximity, the most immutable factor in Google’s algorithm for local search, doing its job. The good news for seo for electricians is that there are ways to push past those invisible borders without a change of address or a “branch office”.
Proximity is Google’s determination of how far away your business is. Other things being equal, the closest electrician wins. Google set local search up like this because it’s beneficial for searchers – a quick response electrician two blocks away is more likely to be helpful than the best electrician 20 blocks away. But “all else being equal” is the key, and this is where the strategy comes in. Location is only one of three factors, and many businesses that perform better on the other two factors (relevance and prominence) beat out those that are closer. The electrician three suburbs away can outperform the one around the corner if the signals are strong enough and pointing in the right direction.
How Your Address is the Default Search Radius
Your business’ Google Business Profile address is an anchor. It’s the epicentre for Google’s proximity score calculations for searches within your city or region. By default, a business with an address in one suburb will appear the highest in searches from nearby the suburb. The further away the searcher is, the lower the proximity score and the more other, closer-to-the-searcher businesses will appear. That’s why electricians who operate a large service area, but are only registered in one suburb, tend to be invisible in suburbs they service regularly.
The default radius doesn’t stay the same all the time – it depends on the competition in the area and the type of service being sought. For example, searches for emergency electrical service tend to have larger map packs because customers want the quickest resolution to their problem. Broad searches such as “local electrician” tend to be more targeted to the searcher’s location. Knowing this can help you choose where to expand your service area. Target the suburbs beyond the natural reach of the local search bubble first, and then move on to more distant areas.
How to Service a Growing Area
With Google Business Profile, you can set a service area (the area in which you operate) that is different from your address. That’s not the same as an address. The service area lets Google know you operate in those regions and will be considered when determining if your listing will show up for searches performed in those regions. If you cover twelve suburbs but set your service area to just three, you’re missing out on nine suburbs.
Make sure your service area matches the areas in which you actually work. Don’t include areas you might consider driving to but don’t – Google’s algorithm compares service area against other data points (such as review locations and content on your website), and inconsistencies cause a conflict of information which will work against your efforts. Precision is better than reach.
It isn’t enough to rank in distant regions just because of the service area setting. It’s a key; we need to unlock it. Those other signals – location pages on your site, reviews from those locations, citations that mention those locations, local backlinks – are what create ranking strength at a distance. So consider the service area setting as staking a claim, and the rest of your local SEO efforts as defending your claim.
Location Pages Do What Your Address Can’t
Having a page on your site for each suburb you serve is the best way to broaden your service area beyond your address. Location pages communicate to Google that your business is relevant to a particular place, rather than just being located there. With a well-developed location page for a suburb 30 minutes from your storefront, your page can rank in the top 3 for “electrician [suburb name]” and attract customers from that suburb every week because it has convinced Google that you’re there.
The copy on those pages needs to be more than “electrician [city name]“. Write about the types of buildings in that suburb. Write about the particular electrical issues that commonly exist there – ageing homes with ageing wiring, new suburbs that need EV charging, commercial areas that require three-phase power. Be an expert in the area. Google’s algorithms are getting ever better at spotting genuine local relevance, rather than forced keyword repetition, and so too will your potential customers be.
Every location page needs to have a title, a heading, content, and an action. It should also link to your primary services pages and other location pages in a natural hierarchy. These links spread authority across the site and help all pages, not just the location pages, rank better in search results than if they were on their own.
Getting Some Clues to Where You Rank in Your Service Area
Typical rank tracking shows you where you rank for a term from a single location. That’s helpful but not enough for a business with a large service territory. With tools such as Local Falcon or BrightLocal’s grid tracker, you get your map pack ranking across a geographic grid – a topography of your rankings across your service area. Doing one of these grids a month will give you a true picture of your geographic footprint and where to target next.
If the grid reveals you’re ranking well close to your office and then dropping off dramatically in the suburbs beyond, this identifies where to start with location pages. If you’re strong in some outlying areas but not others despite covering both, you know where to look for citation or review opportunities. This information transforms the expansion of proximity into a campaign with specific actions to address specific geographic weaknesses.
