the services list: where your listing tells Google what you do

The category puts you in the race, and the services list tells Google which searches inside that race you can actually answer.

Hi,

I wrote recently that the category is the whole game. It is, for getting into the race. But once you are in it, there is a second field that decides which searches you win, and almost everyone leaves it half done.

It is the services section. Google lets you list every service you offer under your categories, each with a short description. Most owners tick a few of the suggested names, "Plumbing repair", "Drain cleaning", and move on. The names alone are better than nothing. They are also a fraction of what the field can do.

Here is how Google uses it. Your primary category says "Plumber". The searches that pay you are more specific than that: "water heater replacement", "sump pump installation", "tankless water heater". Google looks for those words somewhere on your listing before it shows you for them. The category does not contain them. The services list can. A service named "Water heater replacement" with a plain description that says what you replace, which brands you install and which towns you go to is the closest thing a listing has to a page about that service, and Google reads it as one.

Picture two electricians in Somerville, same category, same number of reviews. One has the suggested names ticked. The other wrote a sentence under each one: "Panel upgrades. I replace old fuse boxes and undersized panels in Somerville and Cambridge, permit included." When someone searches "panel upgrade Somerville", one of those listings contains every word in the search and the other contains none of them. The map pack is not a mystery after that.

So here is how to fill it in. Start from the searches, not from your price list. Search your main term, look at what the top three list under their services, and write down what customers actually ask you for on the phone. Add each one as a service with its plain name. Then write a description under every single one: what it is, who it is for, where you do it, in the words a customer would type. One or two sentences is enough.

Leave out anything you would not want the call for. A service you list is a service Google will send you, and the wrong call wastes your afternoon and, worse, ends up as a review about something you never wanted to do.

Check it against the website. Every service on the listing should have somewhere to land on the site, and the site should describe it the same way. That is part of what the website optimization work lines up.

The services list is the one field where you get to answer the specific searches, in your own words, for free. Fill it in properly this week. It takes about an hour, and it is the hour that puts your listing in front of the person searching for the exact thing you do.

Talk soon,
Brandon

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P.P.S. If you want me to do it for you, the plan is here: the plan.