Local Business Service Area Strategy
How Local Businesses Use Service Areas to Grow Their Website and Google Business Profile
When it comes to ranking higher on Google and attracting more customers, your service areas matter just as much as your physical address. Whether you’re a contractor who works across multiple towns, a cleaning company servicing an entire region, or even a brick-and-mortar business operating out of single location — building a smart service area strategy can dramatically expand your reach.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to combine Service Area Pages on your website with your Google Business Profile (GBP) service area settings to increase visibility, attract local leads, and dominate nearby markets.
👉 To get the entire guide for growing a local Google page, grab our Free Google Business Profile Optimization Guide. It walks you through the all the exact steps beyond this article.
Why Service Area Optimization Matters
Google wants to see local relevance for the people searching for businesses closest to them. Most websites and profiles have no mention of their main city. Even if your profile and website only mention your main city, you’re missing out on surrounding communities actively searching for what you offer.
For example:
Brick and Mortar: Smitty's Detail Shop an Auto Detail Shop in Wilmington, Ohio, operates from a physical location but attracts customers from multiple nearby cities by listing those towns as service areas on their Google Business Profile and including those nearby cities on their website content.
Mobile Service Business: A General Contractor in Lebanon, Ohio, Metz General Contracting, links in multiple service area pages on their website each ranking for a specific service in a specific city such as "Remodeling Company in Cincinnati". While pairing those same areas and services as service areas and services on their Google Business Profile.
When done right, you’re expanding your businesses overall reach and authority in your home city — and in every town you serve.
Step 1: Set Up Service Areas in Your Google Business Profile
Inside your Google Business Profile dashboard, you can list up to 20 service areas. Add the towns, neighborhoods, or regions you regularly serve. Be strategic:
Only list areas you're business services or customers will realistically travel from.
Choose areas with high search volume, ideal customer profiles, and low competition.
Keep them updated as your business expands.
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Step 2: Build Service Area Pages on Your Company's Website
Listing your service areas in Google is powerful, but you need to back it up with content on your website. Google rewards consistency between your GBP and your website.
Here’s how to do it:
Create a dedicated page for each service area you target.
Example: “Concrete Contractor in Mason, OH” or “Commercial Cleaning in Dayton, OH.”
Include unique content for each page. Don’t just copy/paste. Talk about the neighborhoods, landmarks, and customer needs specific to that city.
Link these pages from your homepage or service page for easy navigation.
This approach helped ICSCincinnati (commercial cleaning) rank in multiple towns where they service but didn’t have physical offices or addresses.
Step 3: Watch Your Local Business Visibility Grow
Your website and Google Business Profile are going to rank based on different algorithms but both will impact each other. Here's how they both work as a team:
GBP is tied more to a specific location radius and can rank for multiple different keywords.
A website gives you more control of what areas to show up in but each page is limited to so many keywords.
Having both work side by side ensures your companies local dominance for multiple keywords and multiple locations
Together, they multiply your chances of showing up in local search results — not just in your city, but in every town you target.
Ready to Put This Strategy Into Action?
Most local businesses miss out on these opportunities because they don’t know how to structure their GBP and website together. That’s where we come in.
✅ Start with our Free Google Business Profile Optimization Guide to get all the details on how to do this on your own.
✅ Or, if you want a team to handle of this for you our Silver Starter Website + GBP SEO Package sets up and optimizes your GBP and website designed with a service and service area strategy for mobile service and brick and mortar companies all done for you by our team (Only $300).
Your competitors are already targeting your neighboring cities — don’t let them take your customers.
🔑 Final Takeaway: Even if you’re a brick-and-mortar shop, you can expand beyond your physical address with smart service area optimization. Done correctly, this strategy turns one city into many, giving you more leads, more calls, and more customers.
