one page per service, because Google ranks pages, not businesses.

A home page that lists everything you do ranks for none of it, so each service gets a page of its own.

Hi,

Here is a thing most owners do not know about Google: it does not rank your business. It ranks pages. When someone types "brake repair Somerville", Google goes looking for the single best page about brake repair near Somerville. Not the best mechanic. The best page.

Now look at the average local business website. One home page, a wall of text that says the shop does it all, and a bullet list of every service under the sun. Brakes, inspections, oil changes, transmissions, tires, diagnostics, detailing. That page is about everything, which means it is about nothing in particular. When Google compares it against a competitor's page that is only about brake repair, the brake page wins, every time.

Say you run a garage that does brakes, state inspections, oil changes and European cars. Four very different searches, four very different customers. The person with a grinding noise does not care about your inspection sticker. The person with an inspection due tomorrow does not care about European cars. Right now they all land on the same page and have to hunt for the part that applies to them, and most of them will not hunt. They tap back and try the next result.

The fix is one page per service. A brake repair page. An inspection page. An oil change page. A European car page. Each one says what the service is, where you do it, what happens when the customer calls, and has a button to call or book. Each one gets its own title tag with the service and the town in it. Now when Google looks for the best brake page near Somerville, you have one to offer.

This also fixes something for the customer. A person who lands on a page that is exactly about their problem feels found. They stop reading and start dialing. A person who lands on a page about everything keeps reading, gets tired, and leaves.

A few rules so this does not go wrong. Do not create a page for a service you barely do just to have it. Do not copy the same paragraph onto ten pages and swap the service name, Google notices and so do people. Write each page as if it were the only page on your site, because for that visitor it is. And do not hide the service pages three menus deep. Link to them from the home page, in plain words, so a visitor and Google can both find them in one click.

If you have four services, that is four pages. If you have eight, eight pages. It sounds like a lot of work and it is a few afternoons. It is also the difference between a site that shows up for one vague search and a site that shows up for every specific thing you actually get paid for.

The service pages are one of the first things I build when I take on a site, along with the title tags and the map. I wrote out the whole list of what a local site needs in this article.

Talk soon,
Brandon

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