The metro is not the catchment
Ranking for a metro name is expensive and often the wrong target. The suburb, the county and the neighbourhood are where the buying searches happen and where the competition thins out.
SEO services in the United States
The United States is the most contested search market there is, and that cuts both ways. National head terms are effectively closed to a new site, and the long tail underneath them is enormous and largely unwritten. A contractor in a metro of four million is not competing nationally; they are competing with eleven other firms in three suburbs, most of whom have one page called Services.
So the work here is almost always narrower than people expect. Pages for the specific service in the specific area, a Google Business Profile that is actually maintained, and the technical faults cleared so the pages that already earn impressions can move.
What is different about search in the United States
Reviews are the local factor people underrate
Volume, recency and replies all feed the map pack. A profile with forty recent reviews and answers outranks one with two hundred from 2021.
Service areas beat storefronts for trades
A business that travels to the customer is ranked differently from one they visit. Setting the profile up the wrong way caps the radius before any content work starts.
What the work covers
- Local SEO. Map pack, Google Business Profile, citations and location pages, so somebody searching nearby calls you rather than the next name on the list.
- Technical SEO. Crawl errors, speed, indexing, structured data and safe migrations, so the pages that win you work can be found and are not slow enough to lose the visit.
- On-page SEO. Titles, headings, internal links and page copy written around what a buyer is actually trying to do, not around a keyword.
- Content writing. Service pages and articles researched from the search results, written by people, edited for accuracy. Written to be quoted by an AI assistant as well as read by a person.
- Link building. Links earned from relevant sites through outreach and guest content. No networks, no bought placements.
- SEO audits. A full read of your site with every issue ordered by what it is costing you in lost enquiries.
- White-label SEO. The same work delivered under your agency’s name, with reports you can forward as your own.
- WordPress development. Fast, secure WordPress builds and fixes for the sites we optimize.
There is no package to pick from. What the site needs is decided on a call and written down before any work starts. The SEO services page explains what a month covers.
Individual services in the United States
Each of these has its own page for this market, because the work and the search behaviour are both different here.
Where this usually starts in the United States
These are the sectors where the pattern is clearest: a fixed catchment, a list of services people search for by name, and competitors who have not written a page for any of them.
Results from real clients
Every number below is from the client’s own Google Search Console, for the period shown. Impressions are how often the site appeared; clicks are people who arrived. What each visit is worth is your sales process, not ours, so these are the visits we can prove rather than a conversion figure we cannot.
- 52,993clicksUp and Running Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 1 Mar 2023 to 14 Mar 2024
- Impressions
- 2,238,155
- CTR
- 2.4%
- Avg. position
- 13.49
+139,355% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
- 12,285clicksBackcountry Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 6 Jul 2023 to 31 May 2024
- Impressions
- 601,822
- CTR
- 2.0%
- Avg. position
- 19.3
+2,059% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
- 7,630clicksYour Place Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 1 Sep 2023 to 31 May 2024
- Impressions
- 284,589
- CTR
- 2.7%
- Avg. position
- 15.66
+1,184% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
- 6,816clicksPeak EndurancePerformance and physical therapy · 1 Sep 2023 to 31 May 2024
- Impressions
- 482,378
- CTR
- 1.4%
- Avg. position
- 16.16
+1,174% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
Questions about SEO in the United States
Can a small firm compete in a large US metro?
In the map pack and on suburb-level searches, regularly. On national head terms, not quickly and usually not worth the money. The first call is about which of those you are actually trying to win.
Do you work across time zones?
Yes. Calls and email are handled in your working hours, and the monthly report does not depend on a meeting.
Is the work different for a multi-location business?
Yes. Each location needs its own page and its own profile, and the common failure is one page listing twelve cities, which ranks for none of them.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.