Service-area SEO explained

If you go to your customers rather than the other way around, search works differently for you. Google leans heavily on proximity for local results, which is awkward when your "location" is a ute and a home office forty minutes away.

Set your profile up as a service-area business

Google lets you hide your address and list service areas instead. Do that if you don't take customers at your premises, a home address on a listing helps nobody and invites problems. List the areas you'll genuinely travel to, not the whole state.

Be realistic about radius

You will rank strongest close to home and weaker the further out you go. That's not a fault, it's how the map works. Pick the suburbs worth winning, usually where your best jobs come from, and concentrate there.

Location pages that aren't rubbish

• +Jobs you've actually completed in that area, with photos
• +Specifics: housing stock, common problems, access, parking, travel time
• +A local review or two
• +Different words, written by a person who's been there

Five good area pages beat fifty templated ones. If you can't say anything true and specific about a suburb, leave it off until you can.

Let your customers do the geography

Reviews that name the suburb are the strongest area signal you can get, and they're free. When you ask for the review, mention where the job was, most people will include it naturally.

And consider paid for the fringe

For areas you'd love to work in but will never rank organically, a small, tightly targeted ad budget usually makes more sense than years of content.