Most HVAC companies go to the customer. Nobody walks into the shop to have a furnace fixed. Google has a name for that and a setup built around it, and getting it right is one of the cheapest ways to show up in the map pack.
What Google Calls a Service-Area Business
Google's help page defines a service-area business as one that "visits or delivers to customers directly but doesn't serve customers at their business address," and names plumbers as an example. HVAC fits the same description.
- You can list up to 20 service areas, by city, postal code or other area.
- Your overall area shouldn't be more than about two hours of driving time from where your business is based.
- If customers don't come to your address, remove it from the profile and enter only your service area.
- A service-area business can only have one profile for the whole area it serves. A separate profile for each suburb isn't the answer.
- Edits to service areas can take up to 48 hours to show on your profile.
Set It Up in This Order
- Pick the most accurate primary category, not the most impressive one. I see this mistake constantly, and I cover it in the piece on the wrong category.
- List real suburbs by name, such as Broken Arrow, Bixby, Jenks, Owasso, Sand Springs and Sapulpa, instead of leaving the default radius.
- Hide the address if you don't serve customers there.
- Set true hours. Only mark yourself open 24 hours if someone really answers at 2 a.m.
- Add photos of real work, and ask happy customers for reviews.
Three Mistakes I Keep Finding
- A service business set up like a storefront. If customers don't come to your address, the profile should say so.
- A primary category chosen because it sounded impressive, not because it matched most of the work.
- A service area left on the default radius instead of the suburbs actually served.
All three are fixable in an afternoon, and none of them costs anything. They're also the ones I'd check first on any profile, because they decide which searches the profile is eligible to appear for at all.
Reviews and Photos
Once the setup is right, what keeps a profile competitive is fresh activity: reviews from real customers, and photos of real work. Ask right after a job, while the relief is fresh, and ask once. I cover timing in the note on review request timing.
Check Yours in Two Minutes
I built a free Business Profile checkup that walks through the storefront, category and service-area mistakes I keep finding on Tulsa-area profiles. It runs in your browser and doesn't ask for an email.
Setting this up correctly is part of how I approach HVAC marketing in Tulsa.