7-Step Local SEO Optimization Process for Pest Control Companies

The good old days of Yellow Pages where small businesses used to advertise their services to a mass audience have gone extinct.

Today, Search Engine Optimization has taken up the charge and enabled small businesses to expand and grow their customer base through digital mediums. As per Brightedge’s report, over 53% of the online organic search traffic comes only from SEO.

(Source)

Small businesses like pest control companies can leverage digital mediums to create their web presence and enjoy free organic traffic. If you serve only in a particular area, it’s best to employ local SEO to generate qualified local business opportunities.

The question is how can you leverage it for your pest control business?

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This guide provides you with a 7 step process to master local SEO for your business. Before we jump into those, let’s understand what local SEO is.

What is Local SEO for Pest Control Companies?

Local SEO for pest control companies is a tailored approach to implement strategic localized SEO to improve website ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). Doing so enables your business to attract quality traffic, leads, and additional business opportunities.

It is good to have a local SEO checklist & be equipped with different tactics that can help your pest control business to get noticed by Google & other search engines. Tactics like on-page SEO, off-page SEO, setting up your GBP, keyword research & optimization aid your local SEO effort and help you get ahead in the competition.

Opting for SEO service providers is the best bet if you want to aggressively target and acquire new customers.

Why SEO Matters for Pest Control Websites?

Local SEO for pest control companies matters a lot and here are some reasons:

Qualified Lead Generation: People nowadays do not use yellow pages or phone book to find your business. They instead use the internet for the same. By optimizing your search presence with local SEO, you can definitely attract qualified leads and new business opportunities.
Boosts Online Visibility: Local SEO incorporates tactics that help you build your online presence across different platforms. Doing so improves your chances of getting found by potential customers when they need you the most.
Lowers Your Marketing Spends: Branding & marketing spends will never go down. However, local SEO is one area where you can save a significant amount of money just by following the right practices.

Apart from these, local SEO has plenty of other benefits such as increase in brand awareness, driving traffic & sales, high ROI, and high organic rankings. Now let’s get into the process to know how you can achieve all these:

7 Steps to Mastering Local SEO for Your Pest Control Company

1. Claim, Update & Optimize Your Google Business Profile

The best way to attract the target audience & help them find your business is by adding and optimizing your listing on Google Business Profile. A well-optimized GBP listing with updated info and reviews gets to rank on the Google local-pack (Map) results.

Wondering how you can rank there? Let’s find out:

Claim Your Listing

The first step is to claim & verify your exterminator business listings on Google.
If you can’t find your listing, then create a fresh one from Map or Search functions on your Android or desktop devices.
Next is to verify the listings via a postcard, email, phone, search console, or video.

Update Information

Once claimed and verified, the next thing you want to do is update your business information to reflect accurate listings.
Keep your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) up to date.
Also, update business working hours and location info to give users an idea of where and when to reach you.

Optimize GBP For Better Ranking

Optimization includes assigning the right primary category to your GBP listing.
Another aspect is to get more reviews by offering an exceptional experience.

2. Audit & Optimize Your Pest Control Website

Along with GBP optimization, you must pay attention to what goes onto your pest control website. On-site elements such as page experience, meta description, URL structure, and others highly impact your Google SERP rankings.

Thus, you need to ensure your website is well-structured and optimized for ranking. The vital steps to ensure everything is in order include local SEO audit & optimization steps. Let’s see how to approach that:

Audit On-Page Elements

URL: Audit your URL structure to ensure it’s short & keyword-oriented.

E.g., https://exampleyourbrand.com/pest-control-dallas/

Headings & Title Tag: Audit & ensure that web pages follow the sequential heading tags and have a unique title tag.
Check Metadata: Audit your pages are optimized with meta keywords and meta descriptions to give search engines more context about the page.
Audit Page Experience: Analyze your website’s speed, core web vitals, and user experience to find places where improvement is required. Use the PageSpeed Insights tool for the same.

On-Page Optimization for Better Ranking

Insights from the audit step should help you optimize your website.
Improve your URL structure, page experience, and other aspects for higher rankings.
Research place keywords at appropriate places & avoid stuffing or using a single keyword too many times.

3. Build a Competitive Link/Citation Profile

Link and citation profile is one of the top local SEO ranking factors Google considers when positioning your pest control website & GBP listing. They are the second most important factor for local SEO optimization.

To build a competitive link/citation profile, you need to follow certain steps. Here they are:

Outreach to Niche Professionals

Brands have become conscious and more collaborative to achieve better results.
Outreach to niche professionals & businesses to get a mention from them.
Collaborate with them for providing your audience with expert guidance through webinars, podcasts, or co-blogging.

Create a Competitive Link/Citation Profile

The first thing to take care of is not to build a link profile haphazardly.
Build quality backlinks from relevant sources with high domain & page authority/ranking.
If the link-building strategy is not followed, it can hurt your SERP rankings.

Build Citations on Relevant Local Platforms

Be more detailed when building citations & include relevant information about your pest control company.
Keep Name, Address, and Phone Number consistent across all the citations.
Build citations on local relevant sites such as Yelp, Facebook, Apple Maps, and others.

4. Research & Include Location-Specific Keywords for Pest-Control

Keywords are important and still work today for ranking high on relevant search queries. However, you just have to be thorough and a bit more in-depth to get the right keywords that help you rank higher.

Finding keywords requires some effort. Here’s how you can do so:

Research Location-Specific Keywords

Location-specific keywords include the city or a particular area of your city where you operate your business in.
The best tools to scour such keywords are Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
Also, use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to research and find LSI or long-tail keywords that have low difficulty to rank.
Some keyword examples include,
- Pest control near me
- Pest control company in Dallas/Chicago/Houston
- Exterminator near me
- Termite treatment companies
- Bed bug treatment process
- Best pest control for residential, and others.

Places for Keyword Optimization

While it’s important to find the right keywords, it’s also equally important to include and optimize them in the right places.
The most vital places to include keywords are URL, Title tag, Headings, Content body, and meta description.

Ensure that the keywords are inserted naturally and not forcefully. Use them appropriately and sparingly.

5. Create Quality Content Aligned with Your Pest Control Niche

Content is the currency of the internet and also for ranking locally in your area. In addition to building a formidable link/citation profile, on-page performance & keyword optimization, also focus on creating content such as blogs or industry insights that answer the most common problems your audience has.

Further, you want to ensure that the content you create is worthy to be linked back by other industry professionals. Let’s see how to create link-worthy content:

Link-Worthy Content Marketing

Keep your content as relevant and qualitative as possible to your niche and current search trends.
Ensure the value your content provides is unmatchable compared to others and encourage them to link your content.
Some examples of content you can write about include,
- Best practices for mosquito prevention
- Wasp removal procedure
- Ultimate guide on making your home inspect free, and others.

Include Different Content Types

Try different types of content such as infographics, videos, and others that align with your content marketing goals.
Further, utilize different social platforms to promote your content effectively.
Doing so also improves web & social presence for your pest control business and aids in your local ranking too.

6. Monitor & Optimize Your Off-Site SEO Presence

Apart from link-building strategies, off-page SEO includes building a social presence and getting more reviews. Reviews are one of the critical elements for off-page SEO that helps build social proof for your pest control brand.

Thus, keep an eye on the reviews you get on your GBP, Yelp, and other business listings & citations.

Monitor Reviews/Social Proof

Ensure reviews, testimonials, and other social proofs have overall positive sentiments.
For the same, ensure your pest control services are on-par and offer users a great experience.

Even though you get negative reviews, there are ways to handle those negative reviews.

Optimize Your Social Presence

Aside from listing your business on third-party directories to get citations, you must also utilize several social media platforms to build your social presence.

Run off-site campaigns or competitions such as contests, giveaways, quizzes, etc. to build hype and get more traffic.
More traffic leads to better engagement which ultimately leads to higher rankings in local SERP.

7. Track & Optimize Your Local SEO Outcomes

Search engine optimization is getting complex day by day since there are a lot of metrics to track and over-the-top ways to optimize them. To measure the success of your pest control local SEO, you need a streamlined way to track important metrics.

It’s vital to understand what metrics to track along with how to optimize them. Let’s get to it:

Metrics to Track

Traffic: The amount of traffic increased after you’ve implemented ways to optimize your local SEO.
CTR/Calls: The click-through rate or amount of calls you start to get from your organic rankings or business listings and citation efforts.
Conversion: The percentage of traffic that takes the action and converts into your customers.

Monitor Your Local Rankings

Once you start implementing local SEO tactics for your pest control business, monitor how it has impacted your rankings.
SEO won’t improve your rankings overnight and you must not expect the same out of it.
Since it’s an iterative process, focus on improving the quality of your content and link profile along with accurate business citations.

Further Optimization

Once you start to track important metrics such as traffic, calls, conversions, and other local SEO KPIs along with monitoring rankings, you may find a further need for optimization.
Look for places, write content consistently, and build more quality backlinks to improve local SEO rankings for your pest control business.

Expand Your Business with Pest Control SEO

Now you know the process of search engine optimization that you need to follow for your pest control business. By following the steps listed in this local SEO guide for pest control companies, you can surely kick-start your SEO optimization and build a great online presence.

However, doing it yourself can be overwhelming considering you have exterminating projects going on. This is where local SEO experts like Ronkot can come to your rescue. If you want to see your pest control business to succeed in the long run, consider partnering with our team of local SEO professionals.

Get in touch with us and let us be your partner in success!

7-Step Process to Master Local SEO for Pest Control Companies