Guides
Local SEO steps for a restoration business
A water restoration local SEO checklist for the profile and the website, what not to build, and how to ask for reviews without breaking the rules.
What to take away
- Emergency searches are made by people who will call the first credible result that answers. Completeness and accuracy beat cleverness.
- Fix the profile firstcategory, name, address, hours, service area, and photographs of your own work.
- Publish real hours, including the after-hours arrangement. A profile that says closed at 6pm is turning away the calls this trade lives on.
- One useful page per high-value service beats twenty thin location pages.
- Reviews are part of the picture and they are regulated. Ask everyone, gate nobody, pay nothing.
Search platforms change how they work and this is not an inside account of any ranking system. Advertising and review practices are regulated, so check specific claims before publishing them.
Start with what the platform says it uses
Rather than guessing, read the source. The Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google material says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and it names the things a business can actually do: complete the information, keep hours current, add photographs, and manage reviews.
That is a short list, and most restoration companies have not finished it. Do that before considering anything more elaborate.
Profile checklist
- Primary category set to the most specific accurate one for the work you actually do, with secondary categories for genuine additional services.
- Business name exactly as it appears on your signage and paperwork, with no added keywords.
- Address consistent with your registrations, or the service area set correctly if you do not receive customers.
- Service area drawn to where you will genuinely dispatch, not to where you wish you worked.
- Hours accurate, and the after-hours or emergency arrangement stated plainly.
- Holiday and closure hours updated before the holiday, not after.
- Phone number that a person answers, not a number that forwards to voicemail at night.
- Services listed in the words customers usewater extraction, structural drying, sewage cleanup, storm damage.
- Photographs of your own equipment, vehicles and completed work, added periodically rather than once.
- Description that says where you work and how quickly you respond, without claims you cannot support.
- Duplicate and former listings claimed, merged or removed.
Website checklist
- Above the foldthe areas you cover, the fact that you answer around the clock if you do, and a phone number that is tappable.
- A short page for each high-value service, written for a person in trouble rather than for a search engine.
- An honest response-time statement. Publish the window you hit rather than the one you would like.
- Page speed good enough to load on a phone with one bar in a basement.
- Contact form that works and is monitored, as a second option rather than the primary one.
- Clear statement of what you do not do, so referrals arrive correctly targeted.
- No stock photographs of other companies' vans.
What not to build
Two common tactics waste money in this trade.
Wasteful vs. effective tactics
Waste of money
- Town pages
- Name-swapped pages
- Claims
- Fastest, best, most certified
- Proof
- Unsupported superlatives
Do instead
- Town pages
- One real service area page
- Claims
- Live answer, arrival window
- Proof
- Named technician certifications
The first is a page for every town in the county with the name swapped. They add nothing for a reader and are transparently mechanical. One page for a genuine service area, plus real pages for the services, does more.
The second is a claim that the company is the fastest, the best or the most certified in the area. Claims like that have to be supportable, and an unsupported one is a liability in exchange for very little. Say what you actually do: a live answer at any hour, an arrival window you hit, and technicians with named certifications.
Reviews, done properly
Ask every completed customer, at the same point, in the same words. Do not filter for the happy ones, do not offer anything in exchange, and do not write or edit reviews.
Review rules to follow
- Ask every completed customer, same point, same words
- Do not filter for the happy ones
- Do not offer anything in exchange
- Do not write or edit reviews
- Respond to everything, briefly
- Never disclose property, claim or circumstances
Respond to everything, briefly, without disclosing anything about the property, the claim, or the customer's circumstances. A reply that reveals a customer's address or claim details is worse than no reply.
The boundaries are set out in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission: Soliciting and Paying for Online Reviews: A Guide for Marketers guidance, and the specific practices it rules out are the ones a busy small company drifts into without deciding to.
Consistency across listings
Your name, address and phone number should match across every place they appear: the profile, the website, directories, invoices and the vehicle. Inconsistency is a small ranking issue and a large credibility issue, because a caller who finds two different numbers usually calls somebody else.
NAP consistency audit
- Name, address, phone match everywhere
- Check profile, website, directories
- Check invoices and the vehicle
- Audit once a year
- Audit after a move, number change or rebrand
- Remove old listings for former addresses
Audit the listings once a year and after any move, number change or rebrand. Old listings for a former address outlive the address by years.
Measuring it, and connecting it to the work
Track calls from the profile and from the website separately, and track how many convert. A profile producing many calls and few jobs is a call handling problem rather than a search problem, and the conversion side of that is covered in the guide to winning more customers.
Search presence is one of three channels, and the smallest of them for most established companies. The marketing and growth guide sets out how it fits alongside referral relationships and reputation.
Before increasing visibility, check the constraints that visibility will hit: whether the drying equipment covers simultaneous jobs, whether the crew you can hire and train can service more open files, and whether the restoration business can hire fast enough to keep the promise on the page.
Common questions
How often should the profile be updated?
Photographs and services quarterly, hours whenever they change, and holiday hours before each holiday. A profile that has not been touched in a year looks abandoned to a person as well as to a platform.
Do reviews from a long time ago still help?
Recent activity signals a going concern, so a steady trickle beats a burst two years ago. That is another reason to ask every customer rather than occasionally running a push.
Should we list a home address?
If you do not receive customers there, use a service area rather than a home address. Publishing a residential address invites problems it does not solve.
Is it worth hiring an agency?
Only after the checklist above is complete, because most of what an agency will do first is exactly this list. Pay for what you genuinely cannot do rather than for what you have not done.
