I audited an electrical contractor a couple weeks ago. Their footer claimed Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky.
That's a service area about three hours across. From a company with a handful of trucks.
They had zero pages for any of those cities. Not a thin page. Not a bad page. None. Six city names in a footer, and nothing behind a single one of them.
They rank in exactly one of those markets, the one they're physically in, and they rank there because their address is there. The other five names have never done anything except make the footer longer.
This is the most common thing I find, and it's an easy mistake to make, because adding a town costs nothing. Type it, save it. Free is the trap.
Why the list doesn't work
The reasoning feels sound. Google should know I serve Dayton if I say I serve Dayton.
But think about what the search actually is. Somebody in Dayton types "electrician Dayton." Google's job is to return the businesses most likely to be the right answer for a person in Dayton.
On one side, companies with a Dayton address, Dayton reviews, Dayton photos, a page about electrical work in Dayton mentioning Dayton neighborhoods. On the other side, you, with the word Dayton in your footer.
It's not a close call. The word by itself isn't evidence of anything, and Google figured that out a long time ago, because for a while there everybody was stuffing town names in footers and it worked. It doesn't now.
What a city actually costs
A city you back up properly means all of this:
- A real page about that town. Not the same page with the name swapped. Six pages that differ by one word are worse than one good page, because now you've got five thin pages dragging on the whole site.
- Actual jobs from there, on the page. Photos. What the work was. The neighborhood. This is the part that can't be faked and it's the part that works.
- Reviews from customers in that town. Which means doing jobs there first. This is the slow part and there's no way around it.
- Local specifics. The neighborhoods, the older housing stock, whatever's actually different about working there. If you can't name three things about doing your trade in that town, you don't serve it yet.
That's real work per city. Which is exactly why six free footer entries produce nothing. You didn't add six markets. You added six words.
The same mistake, on the paid side
This shows up in ads too, and it's more expensive there because you're paying by the click.
I looked at a heating and cooling company's Facebook ads and the targeting was set thirty-plus miles outside anywhere they'd realistically drive. My opening message to them was literally that their ads were showing to people all over the place.
Somebody put it well in a thread about the same instinct: "even in search he should limit the area. There is no point to target whole world with his campaign."
With organic, over-listing wastes your effort. With ads, it spends your money in real time, on people who were never going to be customers. Same instinct, faster bill.
What to do instead
Pick the town where you already get the most work. Not the biggest one. Not the richest one. The one where you're already winning.
Then go all in on that one place until you're actually visible there. Real page, your jobs, your photos, reviews from customers in that zip code, your Google profile pointed properly at it.
It'll feel like you're playing small. You're not. One city you own beats six you're invisible in, because being invisible in six places generates the same number of calls as being invisible in one.
And once it works, the second city is dramatically easier. You'll have a template that's proven, reviews building, a site Google already trusts. Most guys get to city two in a fraction of the time city one took.
The upsell I'm talking you out of
Fair warning, this next part is my own pricing, and I'm about to argue against buying more of it.
Make The Phone Ring includes three cities. Each one past that is $100 a month, because each one is real recurring work. Full Authority goes up to ten.
Ten cities is a real thing some businesses need. If you've got eight trucks and a metro to cover, that's the right shape.
But most of the guys who ask me about multi-city are one or two trucks, and for them the honest answer is start with one. Not three, even though three is included. One, done properly, and add the second when the first is producing.
That means less money from those clients in year one and I'd rather say it than sell somebody five city pages that sit there doing nothing. Nothing kills a marketing relationship faster than a bunch of pages that never produced a call, and I'd be the one who built them.
The exception, because there is one
If your trade is one people will drive for, this changes.
Specialty work, restoration, anything where there are only a handful of companies in the region who do it at all. Then a wide service area is honest, because customers really are searching from three towns over and really will wait for you.
The test is whether you'd actually take the job. If somebody calls from an hour away and your answer is yes without hesitating, that town belongs on the list. If your answer is "depends how big it is," it probably doesn't.
Most trades aren't like that. Most trades are drive time and margin, and past about thirty minutes the job stops being worth it. Be honest about which one you're in.
Go look at your own footer
Right now. Count the towns.
For each one, ask two questions. Have I done a job there in the last year? Is there a page on my site about working there?
Any town where both answers are no should come off. You're not shrinking your business. You're removing a claim you can't support, which is the same thing Google already concluded on its own.
The mechanics of how local ranking actually works are in the basics post if you want the longer version. And the city pricing is here, including the part where you probably need fewer than you think.
Not sure which of your towns is worth backing up? Tell me your list and where your shop is and I'll tell you which one I'd start with. Usually it's obvious from the outside and impossible to see from the inside.