Location is a critical component of online searches. Searchers (knowingly or not) are pinged their current location in relation to their searches.
Search engines like Google and Bing work hard to provide the most relevant information to searchers. In fact, searchers really don’t even need to enter in terms like “near me” or “specific city” anymore. Based on the location of the device, search engines essentially assumes a “near me” as part of the search.
How this affects service providers
A search for HVAC repair will favor those Heating and Cooling businesses with a physical location not only within the city of the searcher but within the closest range of the searcher. For service businesses, this can be frustrating considering clients almost never visit the business’s location. By nature of the work to be done services are offered at the location of the client. It is true that service businesses can and should set their business up with a radius of service rather than showing a physical location for clients to visit. Even so, the physical location of the company still ranks as one of the most important factors in local search. There is no fooling Google and you should not try.
Effective Local SEO
This does not mean there are not ways to get your business to rank higher further out in a geographic area. It does mean that it takes more work to do so. The search engine wants to provide the most relevant search results. It will place a business that is further out ahead of a closer business if it feels that the searcher will get better results and be more satisfied.
This is where strong SEO comes into play. The better a business can address the needs of searches, the higher the ranking and more opportunities the business will receive in search results.