Service area page: telling customers where you work

A service area page has one job: let a customer find out in a few seconds whether you will come to them. The best ones open with a single sentence naming the area, list the towns people actually type, show a simple map, and say plainly what happens at the edges, such as a travel charge or a minimum job size. Here is how to build one that saves you phone calls from people you cannot serve, and keeps the ones you can.

Who needs one

Any business that goes to the customer: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, cleaners, landscapers, mobile groomers, pest control, movers, caterers, mobile mechanics, home health aides. If customers come to you instead, you need directions, not a service area page; putting a map and directions on your website covers that.

For businesses that travel, the question "do you come out to my town?" is often the first one a caller asks. If the site answers it, more of the calls you get are from people you can actually help.

Start with one plain sentence

Put the answer at the very top, before anything else:

• "We serve homes and businesses within about 30 miles of Dayton, Ohio."
• "We work in Pinellas and Pasco counties, plus north Hillsborough."
• "Based in Bend, we cover all of Deschutes County and Sisters."

Use whatever unit your customers think in. In some regions people think in counties; in others, in towns or in drive time from a known place. If you work in a city, neighborhoods may be the right unit: "Anywhere inside the Beltway, plus Bethesda and Silver Spring."

The towns list: the part people scan

Under that sentence, list the places by name. Customers scan for their own town, and a list makes that easy.

• Use the names people say, including the small ones. Many customers live in an unincorporated area or a village and look for that name, not the nearest city.
• Group them if the list is long. By county or by direction ("North of the river", "East county") keeps a list of forty places readable on a phone.
• Alphabetical inside each group, so a customer can find their town fast.
• Include ZIP codes only if customers use them. Some trades, like delivery or utilities, think in ZIPs. Most homeowners do not.

Keep the list to places you really serve on ordinary terms. A town you go to once a year for a big job belongs in the "edges" section below, not in the main list.

A map that helps, not one that decorates

A map is useful when it shows a shape the list cannot: a radius, a river you do not cross, a county line. A few ways to do it:

• A simple image of your area with the boundary drawn and the main towns labeled. You can make one with a screenshot of a map and a highlighter tool. It loads fast and is easy to read on a phone.
• An embedded Google map with your area outlined, made in Google My Maps. It lets people zoom, but it is heavier and fiddly on small screens.
• No map at all, if your area is one city or one county everyone knows. The sentence and the list are enough.

If you work from home, do not put a pin on your house. A service area does not need your street address, and Google Business Profile lets you hide it as well; service-area businesses on Google explains how.

Travel fees and edges: say it before they ask

The most useful thing on a service area page is often the part businesses leave off: what happens at the edge. Customers are not upset by a fair travel charge. They are upset by a surprise one.

Spell out what applies, in plain words:

• "Outside the towns above, we add a travel charge. Call and we'll tell you before we book."
• "For addresses more than 40 miles out, we take jobs of half a day or more."
• "Emergency calls inside the area only."
• "We cross the bridge into New Jersey for installs, not for repairs."
• "Saturday visits are in Springfield and Chicopee only."

You do not have to publish the exact fee if it changes. Saying that one exists and when it applies is the honest part.

Honesty about where you really go

It is tempting to list every town within an hour, hoping for more calls. It tends to backfire. A customer forty-five minutes away who waits three days for a visit, or gets told on the phone that you do not go there after all, does not come back and may leave a review saying so.

List where you go gladly and often. Put the stretch areas in the edges section. If your area shrinks in winter, or a crew member who covered the north side leaves, update the page that week.

Should you have a page for every town?

Some businesses make a separate page for each town they serve. It can help when each page has something real to say about that place: jobs you have done there, local rules, the kind of homes you work on, a review from a customer in that town. It does harm when the pages are the same text with the town name swapped, because customers and Google both see through it. If you are thinking about town pages, read writing town pages without copying the same page first.

For most small businesses, one solid service area page plus a mention of the main area on the home page is the right start.

Where else the area should appear

The service area page is the full answer, but customers should get the short answer everywhere:

• Home page: one line near the top, such as "Serving the Lehigh Valley since 2004."
• Footer: the main area in a few words, on every page.
• Contact page: a line above the form: "Tell us your town, and we'll confirm we cover it."
• Google Business Profile: the same towns or counties you list on the page, so the two match.

What to do this week

• Write the one-sentence answer to "do you come to me?"
• List the towns you serve on ordinary terms, grouped if there are many.
• Write down your edge rules: travel charge, minimum job, emergency limits.
• Decide on a map: an image, an embedded map or none.
• Check your Google Business Profile service area matches what you wrote.

If your current site buries your area in a paragraph or skips it, you can see your site rebuilt first with your towns laid out properly, then adjust the list yourself.