Service area
Where you will go, written down. A business decision first, a website field second.
What does Service area mean?
The towns, counties, or neighborhoods where you will actually take work. On Google and on your site, it should match the trips you are willing to make.
Also called: coverage area, service radius
A boundary you can keep
Draw the area from the jobs you accept, not from the widest circle that still sounds impressive. A tree crew that turns down calls past a certain county should say so. A cleaner who only works inside one city should not imply the whole state.
Customers use that boundary to decide whether calling is a waste of time. You use it to stop explaining the same limit on every lead. The sentence on the site and the area on the profile should tell the same story.
Addresses versus areas
If people visit a shop, publish the shop's public location and the hours. If you travel to them and work from home, hide the street on the profile and list the towns. Do not rent a virtual office you never occupy just to look pinned to a downtown.
We are based in Yardley, PA, and we work by call and email. That is our own version of the same idea: say the real base, do not invent a desk in every county we mention.
Pages for places
One page can name the area in prose. Extra pages make sense when the offer or the proof differs, not when only the town string changes. A stack of identical town pages is a doorway pattern, and we decline it.
The local SEO checklist asks you to verify the profile area against the site before launch. The content checklist is where you hand us the real list.
An example
A tree service had been driving two counties and quietly refusing a third because of the bridge traffic. The new site said the two counties by name and said the third was outside regular scheduling. The calls got more specific. The owner stopped apologizing for a limit the website had hidden.
Questions we get asked
Should I claim a radius in miles?
Only if you truly use one. Named towns and counties are easier for a customer to check against their own address. A radius that cuts through a town you will not enter creates arguments.
Can the website list more towns than the profile?
It should not. Mismatches make one of the two look stale. Update them together when you expand, as a small content change plus a profile edit.
