Most local businesses follow the exact same playbook when it comes to SEO. They build out their core service pages, set up a handful of city-specific location pages and call it a day.
While those pages are necessary for catching bottom-of-funnel traffic, relying only on service & service area pages caps your business’s visibility to local and non-local users.
To consistently outrank the local competition, you must build topical authority. Topical authority means proving to Google and your audience that you know your industry inside and out.
To do that, you need to create top-of-funnel content that answers the exact questions your customers are asking during their research phase.
It means that you have to look beyond standard location pages.
This content is often the lowest-hanging fruit for local rankings because your local competitors usually aren't doing it. And if they are, you just need to make sure your content is better - which we will dive into exactly how to do that for all the types of content local businesses need to be investing in.
Informational and Blog Content for Local Businesses
Informational blog content is the most important asset for building topical authority for your local business website. A good rule of thumb is to create 2 to 3 supporting blog articles for every main service or pillar page on your site.
The goal here isn't to write generic fluff. You want to demonstrate real-world experience, share expertise, and use first-party data from your own businesses as much as possible.
Unanswered and not-fully-answered questions: Look at the "People Also Ask" section on Google search, but use it sparingly. Instead of copying what everyone else wrote, focus on common customer questions that your competitors haven't answered well, or find ways to provide a significantly better answer than whatever is currently ranking.
How-To and DIY Guides: Write step-by-step guides that help users solve simple problems. Don't worry about giving away your secrets; homeowners who want to DIY will try it anyway, and the ones who realize it's too complicated will call the expert who wrote the guide.
Even Lowes, one of the biggest home improvement stores in the US that also offers home services, has a section on their site dedicated to How-To content. If they aren’t afraid of ”giving away the goods”, neither should you!Brand Reviews: If you install or service specific brands, write honest reviews about them. For example, an HVAC company could write an article on the best HVAC systems for multi-family homes. A pest control company can write about the different brands of pest control spray that homeowners can use to pest proof their homes.
Comparison Content: When customers are in the research phase, they usually narrow their choices down to two or three options before making a final decision. They want to know the pros and cons of different materials, brands, or methods, such as tankless versus traditional water heaters, or metal roofing versus asphalt shingles.
The key to winning with comparison content is total honesty. If you only praise the option that makes you the highest profit margin, readers will see right through it.
Lay out the facts objectively regarding lifespan, maintenance, and performance. This positions your business as a trusted consultant rather than just another company pushing a sale.Cost Content: Cost is easily one of the highest volume search topics in any local industry. It is the content business owners are most hesitant to write out of fear of scaring customers away or tipping off competitors. In reality, hiding your prices just frustrates users and drives them straight to a competitor who is willing to answer their questions.
You do not need to give a single, rigid price line if your work requires custom quotes. Instead, give realistic price ranges and break down the specific variables, like project size, material quality, or permit fees, that cause those numbers to shift.
By being transparent about your pricing structure, you educate your audience and filter out unqualified leads before they ever waste your team's time.
Pro tip: Once these articles start ranking and earning traffic, you use internal linking to pass that authority over to your high-converting service and location pages.
Local Video Content (YouTube)
Video is surging in the local search space, especially on local search results pages for home service and other types of local businesses. Especially for top-of-funnel and informational searches - Google will often show these videos right at the top of the local SERP.
In order to gain that valuable SERP real estate, businesses need to invest in creating educational, informational, and entertaining videos that answer users' burning questions. For most of the blog articles you write, you can create video content to accompany them.
YouTube is the best platform to focus on for local home service and professional service businesses. While short-form platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels are popular, YouTube is by far the most important platform for local businesses. This is because Google heavily favors indexing YouTube videos directly in the search results, likely because they own the platform and profit from its ad revenue.
Focusing your efforts there ensures you capture the most valuable local search real estate and get the most eyeballs on your content.
The key to success on YouTube is to put a clear face and personality in the videos that represent your business. Think about creators like Roger Wakefield in the plumbing space. He built a massive audience by simply being a helpful, recognizable expert on camera with a quirky personality and a great mustache.
To make video work for your local business, you need a clear system:
Commit to consistency: Plan to publish multiple videos per week on a variety of topics. You need to keep creating content in different styles and formats, and measure which work the best in terms of views and engagement.
Build a support team: Don't try to do it all yourself. Build a process that includes team support for video editing, thumbnail creation, scriptwriting and someone to be the face of the YouTube channel. You need the face to be someone who is not likely to leave the company anytime soon, so an owner works best.
Mix short and long-form content: Use short videos to jump on industry trends and build quick engagement. Use long-form videos as your primary traffic drivers, as these are the videos that frequently show up directly in local Google SERPs. Long format videos are also the ones that will help your YouTube channel grow, so make sure you are doing those at least once a week or a few times a month.
Your video topics should mirror your website content strategy. Lean into how-to videos, behind-the-scenes footage on real job sites, reaction videos to common industry mishaps, and product reviews or demonstrations.
Building topical authority is an ongoing process, not a one-time project.
As you publish more educational content, expand your service area pages, and improve internal linking, you'll want reliable data to measure how those efforts translate into search visibility.
Advanced Web Ranking gives you the local rank tracking and AI visibility insights needed to measure progress, uncover new opportunities, and stay ahead of competitors.
Try Advanced Web Ranking free to measure the impact of your local content strategy over time.
User Engagement Content on Reddit, Forums & Online Communities
Reddit has quickly become the golden goose of “trusted” information for just about everything. Traffic has steadily grown since late 2023 and it is now one of the most surfaced websites on Google search, especially for informational queries.
If your target audience is talking about your industry or services on Reddit and other online forums, you need a plan to be there too.
The golden rule for Reddit marketing is simple: Do not be salesy. You are there to play the role of the helpful expert, not to pitch your services.
Maintain an active presence: Regularly check Reddit, local community forums, and neighborhood Facebook groups where your audience communicates. Jump into threads with free, helpful advice from an industry expert.
Provide genuine advice: Answer questions thoroughly without linking back to your website in every single post. Build reputation first and let your profile do the heavy lifting to explain your brand and link back to your site.
Manage brand mentions: If your business gets mentioned in a thread, step in to manage PR. If a customer leaves a complaint, handle it professionally. Never argue in a public forum, it always backfires.
Building topical authority is an ongoing process, not a one-time project.
As you publish more educational content, expand your service area pages, and improve internal linking, you'll want reliable data to measure how those efforts translate into search visibility.
Advanced Web Ranking gives you the local rank tracking and AI visibility insights needed to measure progress, uncover new opportunities, and stay ahead of competitors.
Try Advanced Web Ranking free to measure the impact of your local content strategy over time.
Service Pages - Local SEO Pillar Pages
Your service pages are the pillar pages of your website structure. You need a dedicated, thorough service page for every single service you offer.
These pages shouldn't be thin or templated; they need to be long, detailed, and completely reflective of how your specific business does those services, how much you charge, and any special expertise you have.
The most common mistake local businesses make here is trying to optimize one service page for ten different cities.
Don't do that.
Localize each main service page for one location only, typically the biggest city in your service area, even if you are not located directly in that city. So if you are located in a suburb of Pittsburg like Bellevue PA, you probably want your service pages to target Pittsburg.
Once these main pages are live, monitor their performance in the local SERPs regularly and use internal links from your informational blog posts, the homepage, and other service pages, to boost their rankings
Pro tip: Optimizing internal links on your own website to help the high converting service pages is a major cheat code. You can use keyword rich anchor text as much as you want to help rankings for your top service keywords. Just make sure you do not add too many outgoing internal links per page, stick to 2 or 3 max.
Location and Service Area Pages
The best way to expand the organic search visibility of your business across your service area is using location and service area pages. A Google Business Profile (GBP) can only rank so far away from it’s physical location, your website can rank everywhere in your service area with a little work!
Location Pages: Create these dedicated pages only for cities where your business has a physical office and a verified Google Business Profile.
Service Area Pages: Create these pages for the surrounding cities and towns where you travel to do work, but don't have a physical building.
If your business serves 100 different towns, do not try to build 100 pages at the start. Pick your top 20 towns first and get them to rank to test how the pages actually convert, before investing the time to build out pages for smaller suburbs.
In my experience, service area pages do convert and convert very well!
In this example, all but 2 of these pages are service area pages where the business has no physical presence - they convert just as well as the location pages where they do have a physical office!
Pro tip: It is perfectly fine if you use duplicate or similar content on your service area pages and just change out the location name. As many SEO experts note, as long as the pages are targeting different geographic areas, Google understands the pages need to be similar (there are only so many ways to talk about your services) and won't penalize you for it.
If you find the pages don’t rank well due to competition in the area, you can test adding local information like landmarks, relevant local businesses, and neighborhoods specific to the city or town to help boost its rankings.
Start Investing in Your Business with Quality Local Content that Goes Beyond the Traditional Local SEO Scope
Building topical authority takes more time than launching a few basic location pages, but it completely changes how both Google and your customers view your business.
By consistently answering consumer questions through helpful blog posts, video content, and community forums, you create an authoritative ecosystem that naturally boosts your core service pages.
Start by tackling the highest-volume cost and comparison questions in your market, and you will quickly leave your standard competitors behind.
Article by
Elizabeth Rule
Elizabeth Rule is a local SEO analyst and Google Business Profile Product Expert with nearly a decade of experience helping businesses improve their local search visibility. Since 2015, she has specialized in content strategy, website authority building, and solving complex Google Business Profile challenges. In 2023, she was recognized as one of BrightLocal’s Rising Stars of Local SEO. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, Elizabeth is passionate about helping local businesses grow through strategic SEO and helpful content.
