Having a strong online presence is crucial for businesses today. Understanding your service area and the geographical reach of your customer base is a key factor in maximizing that presence.
Your website is key to attracting potential customers, but optimizing it effectively can be challenging, especially for location-specific businesses.
This article highlights the key differences between service area businesses (SABs) and brick-and-mortar establishments. It also covers practical local SEO tips for both types of businesses.
Service area vs. brick-and-mortar businesses: How do they differ?
Let’s outline the key differences between service area businesses (SABs) and brick-and-mortar establishments.
Service area businesses operate within a designated service area, such as local plumbers, landscapers, or mobile car detailers.
While they may have a headquarters, they are not designed for public traffic. Thus, an effective SEO strategy must highlight their service areas and specific offerings to attract local customers.
In contrast, brick-and-mortar businesses generate revenue by attracting customers to their physical locations, such as restaurants, retail stores or car repair shops.
Their websites should provide clear and accurate information about each location, making it easy for users to find the nearest one.
Recognizing these differences is vital, as each requires a tailored local SEO strategy that can significantly enhance online performance and visibility.
SEO tips for service area business websites
Create a clear and consistent service area page structure
Your website should prominently display the cities you operate in by creating an engaging service area page.
This page should list the cities you service and relevant information about the services provided in each location.
These could be mini location-targeted homepages with:
Name, address and phone number (NAP) information.
Business hours.
Third-party reviews.
Featured articles.
Clear calls to action.
For a user searching for “landscaping services in Malibu,” your Malibu-targeted service page should provide all the essential information needed to encourage conversion.
Service area URL structure
One key element is the URL structure of your service area pages. Keeping a clean structure helps Google crawl your content more efficiently. It’s also a nifty method for filtering in Google Search Console when reviewing performance.
If you’re a business with multiple services offered throughout your service area, I suggest the below folder structure:
https://example.com/service-area/city-name/service-name
This approach allows you to create multiple service pages for each city you service. It also enables interlinking for more even distribution of link equity and improved rankings across your site.
For businesses targeting only one service, such as locksmiths, I recommend a simpler strategy:
https://example.com/service-area/boston-locksmith-services
Some SABs are large or operate as franchises across multiple counties or even states.
In these cases, including the county or state name in the subfolder for further segmentation is beneficial.
However, be cautious of over-segmentation, as creating too much depth can lead to indexing issues.
Google may struggle to crawl pages that are five or more layers deep. Also, location pages typically receive fewer backlinks than other types, resulting in limited link equity.
When executed effectively, these pages succeed due to the hyper-local nature of the searches they target.
Dig deeper: How to create a perfect location page for SEO and visitors
Write location-relevant informational content
Incorporating location-specific content can further enhance your website’s relevance for local searches.
For example, a plant nursery in the Chicago area can create blog posts about plant care and maintenance tailored to the local climate.
Since plant maintenance varies significantly by region, the nursery should focus on plants commonly found in Planting Zone 5, which includes their area.
By providing content on how to prepare these outdoor plants for the changing seasons, the nursery can ensure its articles rank well in local searches and resonate with its target audience.
Similarly, for a small landscaping website I manage for a family friend, I’ve tailored all content to address local topics, such as landscaping permits, watering regulations and selecting grass types specifically for Southern California.
This targeted approach helps attract the right audience and improve local search visibility.
Although I am targeting broad phrases like “do I need a permit for landscaping” and “best grass types,” the additional context I provide in the articles – such as specific location and climate details – helps generate rankings and organic traffic from my target region.
Notably, seven of the top 10 traffic-driving cities fall within my client’s service area.
Dig deeper: How to create local content that builds trust and drives sales
Master service area schema markup
Schema markup is essential for localized websites. It helps Google understand the services you offer and the locations where they are available.
While there are excellent free tools like Rank Ranger’s Schema Markup Generator, I have recently found that using ChatGPT is incredibly effective.
With ChatGPT, I can input all the necessary information and receive a perfectly organized script ready for embedding on my site.
If you’re new to schema markup, ChatGPT can guide you on the information needed to create a complete script.
Here’s an example of my prompt and the resulting response:
Once you’ve properly prompted all the relevant information into ChatGPT, it will reply with code you can copy and paste directly into Google’s Rich Results testing tool.
If your information is correct, you should be able to see fully validated schema markup that is ready to implement on your site.
What I appreciate most is that you can input any errors from Google’s tool directly into ChatGPT when troubleshooting. It can then help you resolve those issues.
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Now, let’s move on to my top SEO tips for brick-and-mortar websites.
SEO tips for brick-and-mortar business websites
Keep in mind that SEO for brick-and-mortar businesses focuses on driving foot traffic.