How to Create a Local Strategy that Brings Jobs, Not Just Search Positions
Rankings feel good. Phone calls pay bills. The difference is one that not many people in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry want to talk about, because you can spend months working to move up in the search engine rankings and still have an appointment book that resembles an iceberg. The best local strategy for an electrical company is not a series of random actions slapped together to form a marketing plan: it’s a process. Each step provides the foundation for the next, and the quickest way to waste time is to move ahead because something else is more fun than addressing your problems. If you want to do seo for electricians right, it’s not a marketing campaign so much as building a house: you lay the foundation first, the walls second and finally the paint job. Any other way results in a nice-looking structure that falls apart when it rains.
What you will find below is an actual process – not a theoretical model, not a series of vague recommendations – but a specific sequence that an electrician can follow step-by-step. It’s not going to happen overnight. Some of these things take weeks to produce results. But done in sequence, and fairly consistently, these steps deliver a local search marketing strategy that attracts calls to your business without ongoing advertising costs to sustain it.
Step One: Worry about the Basics First
This strategy will not work if the website is not in good shape. Before you create content, before you develop citations, before you seek a review from anyone, make sure the website is technically sound. Put it through the Google PageSpeed Insights and check the mobile score. If it’s less than 50, there’s work to be done. Check it with the Google Search Console and look for crawl errors, broken links and pages blocked from indexing. Check the mobile version on a real phone (not an emulator but a device) – is the text legible, are the buttons clickable without having to zoom and is the phone number clickable and accessible without scrolling?
These repairs aren’t sexy. They don’t feel like marketing. But a broken website depresses all other types of SEO work done on it. Google’s Core Web Vitals (including PageSpeed) affect local map pack rankings, so a poor PageSpeed rating is a penalty on every other ranking factor you’ve worked on. Pay off your technical debt. It allows the rest of the strategy to run smoothly.
Step Two: Claim and Complete Google Business Profile
If it’s not claimed, claim it. If it is claimed, but half-complete, complete it. Every single field. This is mandatory and “mostly complete” is not good enough – Google favours completeness and uses profile information to match businesses to search queries, so any unfilled field is lost relevance.
Primary category should be “Electrician“. Secondary categories must include all specific services provided – electric vehicle charging station, electrical panel maintenance, emergency electric repair, landscape lighting, smoke alarm installation, whatever is relevant to the work being performed. The business description must be written in a human voice: folksy, informative about the services provided, geared towards expertise and not keyword stuffing. Services should be listed in specific services with brief descriptions, rather than the generic “services”. Provide at least ten photos right away (before-and-after shots of work, company truck, staff, etc.), and regularly update with at least two photos per month.
Step Three: Check and Unify Name, Address and Phone Number
The name, address and phone number must be the same across all directories. Not approximately the same. Character-for-character identical. Type up the format as it appears on the Google Business Profile and make this the “official” version. Next, do a search for the business name in every major directory – Yelp, Angi, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Houzz, HomeAdvisor, local chamber of commerce websites – and update any variation.
This process is time-consuming and tedious, and that’s why the majority of businesses don’t do it and then complain that local authority has stalled. Inconsistent NAP information causes trust issues in Google’s algorithms that dampen map pack results. Resolve the inconsistencies and you eliminate a hidden drag that has potentially been impacting your results for months or years.
Step Four: Create Location Pages for Each Area
A website page can only possibly rank in one locality. If there are eight suburbs the company serves, it needs eight location pages – not eight pages that are identical except for the name of the city, but eight pages with different content that speaks to the local market and addresses the specific concerns of that particular area.
Each page needs a title tag and heading that mentions the service type and the name of the location. The page should include references to the kinds of buildings located in those areas, the kinds of work that might be needed (if it’s an industrial area that might be different work than if it’s a residential area) and any other local references that show that we know something about the area beyond the city name. Each page requires a click-to-call phone number, a brief paragraph of services offered in that location, and a call to action that demonstrates the availability of service – same day, emergency service, whatever is being offered.
Step Eight: Monthly Review, Measurment and Tweaks
If you can’t measure, you can’t manage. Google Business Profile (GBP) Insights reveals the number of people who viewed the listing, clicked for directions, clicked the call button. Google Search Console shows which search queries are responsible for traffic to the website and where the website ranks in Google. A call tracking number (a forwarding number for calls coming from the website or GBP) indicates how many calls to the business can be attributed to organic search, which then links the SEO efforts to revenue.
Look at these numbers monthly. Not too much, not every day, but at least regularly. Identify which are and aren’t improving. If the GBP is getting clicks but not calls, check the profile (photos, posts, response rate). If location pages are receiving views but no calls, the call-to-action or the phone number needs to be improved. If some keywords are appearing in Search Console between 8 and 15, these pages have content that can be optimized to appear in the top ten. The data tells the story. Reading it often turns the strategy from a build-it-and-forget-it project, to a self-improving system that becomes more effective with each cycle.
