We’re a growing multi-location home service company (3 branches within MN) looking for an experienced partner to support our local SEO, Google Ads (PP

[WaterRestore]

We’re hoping to work with someone who understands how traditional SEO, local SEO, and paid search all work together, especially for service businesses with multiple locations. On the paid side, clean tracking and clear reporting are important to us so we can understand lead flow, call activity, and form submissions. We’d love guidance on geographic and audience targeting, remarketing, and how you typically balance website improvements vs search improvements. We’re interested in your approach to GBP optimization, location/city pages, backlinks etc. We’re also curious how to optimize for search evolving with things like AI-driven results and answer-style content.

 

[Local Pulse]

Hey, I've run into this exact situation a lot with service businesses that have multiple locations. Most of the confusion usually comes from trying to treat paid search, SEO, and maps as separate things when they are really just different moments in the same decision. Good to see that you're looking for someone who understands how they all work together.

Paid usually catches the person who already decided to hire someone.
Maps catches the person choosing who to trust nearby.
Organic catches the person comparing or double checking.

As for your tracking comment, totally get you... if tracking is messy everything feels random, so the first thing I normally do is make calls and form fills visible by source. Once owners can see where real customers come from the conversations get much easier.

For location pages the big mistake is either cloning the same page for every city or writing one generic page and hoping it ranks everywhere. What tends to work better is tying a service to a place and then supporting it internally so Google understands why that location is relevant for that job. Also, to spend time rolling up your sleeves and actually creating location / service area pages that discreetly show the reader the professional is local and knows his/her community well.

Backlinks are similar. A few local and meaningful mentions usually move the needle more than big authority campaigns that have nothing to do with the service area.

Paid data is also super useful for SEO. It quickly shows which searches actually turn into customers so you stop guessing what to optimize for. That being said, paid for me is usually a task that I do after I've completely optimized every other organic aspect of the business since you may not even need to toss money at Google.

As for AI style results we are already seeing Google pull short explanations instead of sending traffic, so clear answers beat long marketing copy now. The sites that explain things simply tend to show up more even if they are not the flashiest.

Happy to chat if helpful. Always enjoy these kinds of setups.