The Map Pack Is the Only Race in Town
When most electricians think of how to get more customers, they think of a better website. This is not incorrect, but it’s like sprucing up your truck while the starter motor is broken. The truth is, the money is really in the three listings that appear above the organic search results – the Google Map Pack – and electricians who get this right are winning jobs that their competitors don’t even know exist, seo for electricians isn’t some arcane, high-tech practice limited to the tech sector. It’s a highly targeted, highly localised affair and the Map Pack is the league table. If you’re in the top three, the phones will be hot. Don’t get there and you could just as well not be there at all, at least to the customers who are looking to book.
The time it takes to get into the Map Pack is determined by a few things that Google is constantly calculating. Proximity to the searcher. How relevant your listing is to the searcher’s query. And trustworthiness – Google’s term for how much information it has about your business being real, active and trustworthy. You can’t do anything about the searcher’s location, but you can do something about the other two. This is where you should focus.
Your Google Business Profile Is a Ranking Document
Electricians generally use their Google Business Profile as an online business card. Complete it, possibly change the phone number if you move, and forget about it. Google treats it like a document that it continually examines to judge your trustworthiness. A profile unchanged for two years is stagnant. A profile that’s frequently updated suggests that the business is active and interesting.
First, choose a category. The main category should be “Electrician” – not “Electrical engineer” or “Home services” or “Canny”. Exact match wins. You can list your specialities, like EV charger installers, solar installers, commercial contractors, in the secondary categories, but not the primary. This is what Google uses to match your profile to potential customers’ searches and if you’re not matching here, it means ranking you could be winning.
Don’t neglect your profile description. It isn’t heavily weighted, but it’s the first thing a customer sees when they land on your profile. Make it concrete. Talk about the type of work you do, the places you work, and give a unique selling point. “Licensed residential and commercial electrician in greater Austin with panel upgrades, generator installation, and EV charger wiring” is better than “Affordable electrical services, quality workmanship and customer satisfaction.” One is specific. The other is generic.
Reviews Accelerate Faster than Almost any other Factor
There’s nothing that moves Map Pack rankings faster than reviews. It’s not just the rating, the quantity, timeliness and topicality of reviews all play into Google’s scoring. Most markets will see a competitor with 80 reviews at 4.7 stars rank higher than you with 12 reviews at 5.0 stars. Google considers volume a stand-in for longevity. More reviews means more work, which means more established. The algorithm likes established businesses.
The key to getting reviews is not asking the right way, but asking. Make it a part of the job, just like the bill. A quick text message with a link to your Google review page, sent within an hour of completing a job, has a high rate of success. The customer is still in the happy zone (the light works, the panel has been replaced, etc.) and that’s when they have 45 seconds to write a review. Three days later, that ship has sailed.
Keyword-rich reviews also help. But not because you should tell your customers what to write (you should not), but because when a customer writes “fast response for my electrical panel emergency in Round Rock” the keywords in the review text send back location and service relevance signals to your profile. The more relevant the reviews, the more location and service-specific relevance Google picks up.
You Can’t Move, But You Can List Your Service Areas
You can’t relocate your business to be closer to all potential customers, but you can tell Google where you operate. Your GBP‘s service area fields allow you to list all of the cities, towns and zip codes you regularly serve. This is important, because Google looks at your service areas to determine whether you’re a relevant match for searchers in an area you work but don’t have a physical presence. If you’re an electrician operating out of one suburb but also servicing five other suburbs, you should list them all. Not doing so is a sure way to lose ranking opportunities in those suburbs.
One thing not to do: claim to service cities you don’t service in an attempt to increase your presence. Google is pretty smart at matching up the service areas you indicate with your reviews, your website content and your citations in other directories. If it’s not, if you’ve claimed to serve a city but have no reviews mentioning that city, no content on your website about that city, and no citations that put you in that city, then this claim isn’t strong and can undermine your authority.
Posting on Your GBP Like a Lazy Twitter
Google Business Profile (GBP) posts, the brief announcements you can post directly to your profile, are an underused, under-appreciated tool for ranking and converting customers. Sending out a simple update a month or two, promoting a service you’re offering, reminding potential customers about a coming season, or showing off a recent job you’re taking on, keeps your profile alive. “Panel inspections for summer – only a few slots left this month” or “Now offering Level 2 EV chargers for homeowners” – these posts appear on your profile, and signal to Google, and people looking for a service, that you’re alive.
The impact of posting, of getting regular reviews, of citations and a compatible website takes time. It takes months, not weeks, to rank in the Map Pack. But that speeds up the process, and those electricians who know what the pieces are don’t wait as long to find out why their competitors are in the top spot.
