Struggling with Local SEO for My Appliance Repair Business: What Am I Missing?

[Anatoliy]

Hey everyone,

I’m the owner of a local appliance repair business, and I handle my own SEO (I’ve got a background in IT and marketing). Here’s what I’ve done so far:

- I’ve optimized my website’s technical SEO, hitting 100% according to aHrefs site audit. It’s indexed by Google and listed on citation directories.
- My landing pages are optimized for key search terms, and I regularly update the site with blogs and other fresh content.
- I manage two Google Business Profiles for my locations, keeping them updated weekly.
- We’ve been diligent about collecting reviews, and in our 4 years of business, we’ve gathered hundreds. My local pack rankings have been improving, according to Local Falcon.
- I’m building quality backlinks, steadily increasing over time.
- I’ve started regular posting on Facebook and Instagram to boost social presence.

Despite all of this, I’m still not ranking as high as I’d like for my main keyword (“appliance repair tucson”), and a few competitors are consistently outperforming me in organic search.

What could I be missing?

I track performance using GA4 and Search Console. I used SemRUSH in the past but found it wasn’t that accurate for local searches, so I stopped. Now, I’m considering Moz or aHrefs to figure out why I’m getting outperformed and to guide me on what to fix.

For those of you running SEO for local service businesses, what tools do you recommend for troubleshooting and improving rankings? What’s worked best for you?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

For those of you running SEO for local service businesses, what tools do you recommend for troubleshooting and improving rankings? What’s worked best for you?

Places Scout is the tool I use everyday.

As far as ranking go, this article has some things you can look into - 5 Things to Check When Your Google Business Profile Rankings Drop - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[PaulSteinbrueck]

It sounds like you're doing a lot of things well. The first thing that comes to mind is your location(s) compared to city center and your competitors. I suggest using a local grid ranking tool to see how you're ranking at various places in your area.

And if you give the name of your company others in the forum might be able to look and see if there is anything else that stands out.

 

[Invalley]

Despite all of this, I’m still not ranking as high as I’d like for my main keyword (“appliance repair tucson”), and a few competitors are consistently outperforming me in organic search.

In cases like this, when you're trying to snipe very specific competitors that are ranking higher than you, it may be a good idea to try competitor link building. You can choose one of the competitors who rank higher than you, check a list of all the links they have using Ahrefs, and see which of those links you can copy. After all, if that page has that link and it is ranking higher than you, then at the very least getting the link won't hurt you. And it may help close the gap between the two of you.

Landing guest posts and publishing press releases isn't trivial. But if your competitor has hired a link building agency, there is a good chance that a lot of their links will just be in forums, business directories, stuff like that. Links you can copy easily with a bit of manual work.

 

[Anatoliy]

That would be an obvious thing to do, however, my biggest competitor's backlink profile looks much like mine, even slightly worse (mine is 5staraz.com):

The data is from Moz, and it is not very accurate: in my profile I see missing a lot of links with high DA. For example, here's the top of my backlinks list from the linkody.com:

So, all this tells me that my problem is not in my backlink profile...

 

[Anatoliy]

It sounds like you're doing a lot of things well. The first thing that comes to mind is your location(s) compared to city center and your competitors. I suggest using a local grid ranking tool to see how you're ranking at various places in your area.

And if you give the name of your company others in the forum might be able to look and see if there is anything else that stands out.

The company name is 5 Star Appliance Repair (Tucson, AZ).
Website: 5staraz.com

I'm doing pretty well in local packs for my East and West locations (according to localfalcon.com):

West is where most of my competitors are located.

But it is the natural search results ranking for my main (biggest search volume) keyword "appliance repair tucson" that I'm falling behind, and I can't understand why...

Any help is greatly appreciated.