Summary
- Most local businesses only rank well in nearby searches, but there's a method to extend reach to 5, 10, or even 30 miles away.
- Proximity to the searcher is the top ranking factor, which affects visibility for businesses where clients don't visit the physical location.
- Start by listing all services your business offers, such as lawnmowing or pipe repair.
- Identify and list all nearby cities you want your business to rank in.
- Combine service and city lists into a table to plan which pages to create for your website.
- Prioritize page creation based on search volume for each service-city combination using keyword research tools.
- Use tools like SEMrush, Keywords Everywhere, or Google Keyword Planner to assess demand.
- Create individual web pages for each service and city pair; mirror your homepage layout for familiarity and professionalism.
- Use headers, subheadings, and body text wisely to incorporate main and related keyword phrases.
- Customize content with AI tools like ChatGPT to save time while tailoring each page to its specific location.
- Update your Google Business Profile to connect service-location pages without adding new locations.
- Use products or services sections to list combinations, linking them to corresponding landing pages.
- Add relevant photos and descriptions that accurately describe your services without spamming keywords.
- Adjust your Google Business Profile to reflect all new target areas, ensuring potential clients are aware you serve them.
- Build citations and backlinks for new pages to rank well; submit pages to online directories, both general and niche-specific.
- Consider using local directories for better regional relevance.
- For backlinks, create link-worthy content, guest post, analyze competitors, or create infographics.
- If managing backlinks and SEO strategies feels daunting, seek professional help like Chris Palmer SEO.
- This method is advanced and works best when basic SEO practices are already implemented.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing a local SEO strategy to help your small business rank better in search results, far beyond your immediate location. Start by listing every service you offer. For example, if you're a landscaper, list services like lawn mowing and patio installation. Then, identify nearby cities where you want to reach more customers.
Combine these lists into a table, with each service and city pairing as a future website page. Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to determine which combinations have the highest search volumes. This way, you’ll know which pages to prioritize.
A good way to create these pages is using your homepage layout as a template, as it’s already familiar and professional. To save time, customize content with AI tools like ChatGPT. Include primary keywords naturally in headings and body text.
Update your Google Business Profile to reflect your service area. List service-city pairs in the products or services sections and link each to its corresponding landing page. This connects your services clearly to each location.
Another possible approach is building citations and backlinks to your new pages. Submit them to online directories and focus on local and niche directories for better relevance. If managing SEO gets too complex, consider professional help, but only after basic SEO practices are in place.
By following these steps, you'll enhance your online presence and reach more potential clients, even miles away from your physical location.
Quotes by Author
"Most local businesses are only able to target and rank in their own backyard but what if you could rank across your entire service area"
"Your business here is not close enough to rank for these cities here and the reason this is a problem at all is because the proximity of your physical address to the searcher is still the number one ranking factor"
"If this is how people are finding you, you want it to feel like a homepage with all the persuasive elements that go on one"
"No one has time for that, you certainly don't have time for that either"
"This step isn't what's going to help you rank, this is just for future clients to see that you can work with them where they are"
Full Transcript
most local businesses are only able to Target and rank in their own backyard but what if you could rank across your entire service area with just a few changes in this video I'm going to show you the new method that's finally letting local service businesses rank five 10 20 30 mil away from their physical location what changes you'll need to make to your website and the super easy addition to your Google business profile that makes the whole thing work okay so we got to start by talking about the big problem with local SEO now here's the thing it's really easy to rank in map searches that are really close to your business but as Searchers get further out from your business your ability to rank drops by a lot unfortunately so just for an example let's say you were a landscaping business and you're in Oak Park Illinois but you want to get clients in Chicago or in Evanston up here or or you know in Elmhurst the problem is your business here is not close enough to rank for these cities here and the reason this is a problem at all is because the proximity of your physical address to the Searcher is still the number one ranking Factor even for service businesses where you know clients don't come to you things like you know if you were a plumber who travels out to clients in a 30 mile radius or if you're a graphic designer designer who works from home and you can help clients remotely anywhere they are if that's the case you just very unlikely to be found by a Searcher even 5 miles away from them which is a huge bummer obviously but luckily there's a way around this now so now let's talk about the new strategy and by the way this PDF that I'm working from I'm going to make it available to you just go to the link in the description below this video that way you don't have to take any notes so let's start off with with step one which is listing all of your services so you're just going to start by writing down every service your business offers you know and that list is going to form the basis of your expansion strategy so example for a landscaping company services might be things like lawnmowing garden design tree trimming patio installation for a plumbing business it might be pipe repair drain cleaning water heating installation or emergency plumbing services so whatever your business is just start by writing down all of the different services you offer next you're going to want to identify all the cities that you want to rank for in your business so again if you're in Oak Park you probably want to rank for the bigger city of Chicago right Evon Elmhurst oaklan these are all cities you'd want to rank for write them all down in a separate list just make sure you know these are a reasonable distance where you can actually work with people if you're traveling out you don't want to start ranking for places 200 miles away if you're you're not really realistically willing to go that far okay now for step three you're going to want to take your two separate lists remember for your services and for your cities and this is going to give you all of the different combinations for you know the pages you're going to need to create so just list them all out in a table like this so you can see at a glance what you have to do and each box up here represents a new page you'll need to create so it's an easy way to keep track of all of it okay if you're still with me it's time for step four now which is prioritizing all of those pages you have to create based on the search volume so what you want to do here is research uh to get the search volume for each service in each City just so you can determine which combinations are going to have the most searches on them it's going to help you focus your efforts where they can definitely have the most impact so obviously only so many hours in the day you're running a business you know you can't just be willy-nilly creating Pages you want to create the ones first that are going to have the most impact right so but when we talk about keyword research how exactly do we do that well we need to use keyword research tools to get us there so there's a few I recommend I happen to like semrush it is paid unfortunately so you have to pay for that one and it is a little bit of a steep learning curve it's not too bad you can definitely find YouTube videos that'll show you how to use it now here's a free one called called keywords everywhere it's just a browser extension you you put on Chrome or whatever and it's going to show you the search volume again you just want to get a YouTube video that'll show you how to use it and also Google Keyword Planner is free that might be the easiest one to use so you've got some options depending on if you want to pay or if you want to use something free so then given all that keyword research you do you're going to start ordering these like let's say you know Chicago lawnmowing has the most search volume you just label that as one then you know neille tree trimming is two right that's the second highest search volume so you're just going to put these in whatever order makes sense that way you know which order to go in when you're making all these Pages then from here what I would probably do is write out an actual list of all these just to make it easier so you're not working on a table anymore but this just helps you really easily visualize it when you're getting started so from here step five we need to actually create all of these service location pages so for each combination of service and City you need a dedicated page on your website and you're going to generally want to base that on your homepage layout what you don't want to do is create a service City page that just looks like a complete afterthought because think about it if this is how people are finding you you want it to feel like a homepage with all the persuasive elements that go on one a nice hero section benefits FAQs possibly testimonials all that good stuff you don't want it to just look like a blog post which is let's face it that's what most businesses do with their service pages right so base it on your homepage layout it's going to work a lot better so you're going to obviously start with those highest priority pages one at a time you know don't overwhelm yourself just finish one then move on to the next one as time allows and just keep going in you know descending order from there and we've got some real life examples here sorry like the text is a little hard to read on them but you'll just have to take my word for it this one is you know for Oak Park landscaping services Evanston landscaping services winetka landscaping services so they all look fairly similar similar treatment just different photos different text now for this just a few action items I recommend doing so again use your homepage as a template just to maintain that consistent looking feel and also so it just feels um like thought has been put in to each one because they're not going to your homepage right they're going to that page first and then you want to title each page with the service and location like lawn mowing services in Evanston that's going to be your headline your main headline on the page and it's also going to be what comes after your email address so let's say it is Chicago lawn services.com and then it would be slash lawn mowing services Evon for example okay moving right along to step six you're going to want to customize your content with chat GPT let's get smart about it let's not overwork ourselves and think we have to write brand new content from scratch for each of these Pages nobody has time for that you certainly don't have time for that either so to make each page unique and relevant with the specific location you want to use chat GPT to lightly rewrite and customize the content for each individual page you're doing make sure you're including your keyword phrase which is generally going to be that service in location lawn mowing in Chicago tree trimming in neille that's going to be your keyword phrase you want to put that in the H1 heading what's an H1 heading if you don't know that is just the big headline at the top top of each page then you want to use the keyword in several subheadings and multiple times in the body text as well so if you've got a benefit section let's say further down the page you want to use that keyword phrase in that subheading as well and maybe a few times just when you're in your paragraphs or in your bullet lists you can easily work them in as needed there and you want to do it a couple times for sure you also want to incorporate those closely related phrases to further enhance your SEO so examples of closely related phrases for lawnmowing services in Evon might be grass cutting in Evon Evon lawn care experts professional yard maintenance or lawn services so it's not just a repeat word for word of lawnmowing services in Evon but it's related Google will see that and think okay they're not just trying to gain the system here they're actually using phrases that one would expect to see on a page that's about this topic make sense or for pipe repair naville you'd have naville plumbing services emergency pipe fix you know water leak repair fix pipes that kind of thing okay now we're continuing we're still inside of Step six so in order to make each page unique and relevant to your specific location here is the example chat GPT prompt that I would use and again you can download this PDF by going to the link beneath this video so you don't have to like pause the video and type this out yourself so you're going to give it its objective first and you're going to say write and optimize new landing page content to help my business rank higher in Google map searches for my specific service and location please take the following web page content then this is where you're going to actually insert your homepage copy right there you're going to give it the copy you already have and you're going to say rewrite it to include you know this service and location text continuing lightly rewrite and customize it for for a landing page targeting the SEO keyword phrase and then you would insert your location service keyword phrase here lawnmowing and aille tree trimming Chicago whatever it is you put it right there then you're going to give it some requirements it always helps to tell it exactly what to do so we'll tell it to include the keyword phrase in the H1 heading we already talked about that that's the top headline of your page use the keyword in several subheadings and multiple times in the body text incorporate closely related phrases and emphasize local relevance and Sur offerings to appear to nearby customers okay once we've done that it is time for step seven updating your Google business profile otherwise known as your GBP so what we need to do here is connect your Google business profile to each of your new service location pages and this is important you don't need to create a new location or a listing with your GBP for this we're operating under the assumption here that you don't actually have multiple locations you have one location but you're able to travel out to all these different cities that's what this strategy is so the way we do this the way we connect these dots between your new pages and your Google business profile is for each service location combination for each page you created you're going to add a product or service listing in your GBP so you can see this here so you're going to log into your GBP you're going to add a new product right here that could be lawn mowing in Chicago right then from there you can start adding categories so let's say you're going to do all these Pages for the the lawnmowing service right so could be lawn mowing naville lawn mowing Chicago lawnmowing Evanston you would then just create a category of lawnmowing and then you can put all of your lawnmowing products or Services into that category that way it just it's nice and organized within your Google business profile so highly recommend doing it that way you can put the price in that doesn't really affect the strategy here product description this is interesting make a description for it but don't go kind of crazy putting in all the keywords it's not really going to help you here so just put in a a respectable description that tells people what it is don't go overboard but here's where the rubber meets the road and you put in your product landing page it says optional but it's not that's like that's the whole reason why we're doing this so what you're going to put in there is the link to the page for this particular product here lawnmowing in Chicago right that's going to link to your lawn mowing and Chicago page right here so then from there feel free to add a photo not super important to the strategy but might as well be complete right so once you've done that next you want to adjust your service area so you want to update your Google business profile to include all all of the new cities that you're targeting that just shows your new potential customers they are in your service area and you will work with them this step isn't what's going to help you rank this is just for future clients to see that you can work with them where they are so you're just going to start searching for areas we have WKA here you're just going to one at a time you have already done neille Oak Park Evon Chicago you're just going to one by one put those cities in there and you're good to go now step eight so of course if you know anything about SEO what we've already covered is only going to get you so far you need to still build citations and backlinks to your not only to your website but to your individual service location Pages you just built so you need it for each new page now let's talk citations for a second a citation is simply any mention of your business online so you're going to want to submit each service location landing page to online Direct directories that's generally where we keep the citations right so how does citations actually help you rank well it's basically there's verifying your business existence and relevance it's just a signal to Google so what are some common citation directories things like Yelp Yellow Pages Bing places and the Better Business Bureau to name a couple but there are other places for you to get citations too besides the the biggest players so you want to focus on Niche directories for your industry first right so if you're a petsitter it' be pet sitters International there's a website for that or wedding wire if you're a wedding planner clutch for it Isa for home cleaning services you get the idea every industry kind of has their own online directories that you want to get set up on the other thing you want to focus on really important is local directories for your location so if you're in Chicago it' be you know choose Chicago or the Chicago Chamber of Commerce Chicago business business directory everston now neille local all the places that are directories meant for your immediate location so focus on your industry Niche ones first then your location ones that's citations now let's talk backlink so whenever you're trying to rank any new page in Google you need to get links from other reputable websites pointing to your new service and location Pages think of these as just votes basically like other websites think so much of your website they're actually linking to you so that's kind of the idea of why links are important they still are Google will say they're not not true they still use backlinks as a huge ranking signal so the problem with backlinks is this can to be challenging to do for multiple Pages it's really hard to do it yourself but if you want to do it yourself I've got some suggestions for you ways to get backlinks would be to create linkor the content for each service things like high quality guides case studies articles that will attract some natural backlinks or even better probably it's a little more direct is using a guest posting strategy where you're basically going to write guest post for industry blogs so you work it out with other blogs other websites and say hey I want to write an article for you it's going to be a helpful article and you're just going to insert a link to your page in there generally the way you do that is in the Bio Section so it'll be an article then it'll be your bio at the end like you know any article has like about the author within there it'll say you know Nathan Smith is the owner of you know Lawn Care Chicago and you would just with that Lawn Care Chicago you would link to your most high priority page you can also do something will be called a competitor backlink analysis so you're just going to use some kind of a tool some kind of an SEO tool like semrush to analyze your competitor's backlinks and then kind of do something similar so you're basically just you're taking what you see them doing and you're trying to get the same links for yourself problem is you have to outdo them you can't just do the same as them or it doesn't really work or create and distribute infographics for each service um it's kind of a natural link attractor that's if you want to do it yourself I don't necessarily recommend doing it that way so because it can be so complex so if you need help I would consider reaching out to Chris Palmer SEO he's actually the guy that taught me the strategy shout out to you Chris he does this stuff all the time so if you want this kind of thing done for you back links built I would reach out to Chris Palmer SEO out of Florida and uh just call it a day now of course this strategy is a bit more of an advanced one and it's not going to help you that much if you don't already have the basics covered but don't worry I've got you in this video where I'm going to share all the top ranking factors that you need to get just right I even scor each one of them so you know what to start with with that's going to give you the most bang for your effort and which ones you can pretty much skip because they just don't even work anymore so click right here and let's get you set up right
