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L24: SERP Summary – Tracking 20M Home Service Keywords

The LSG SERP Summary tracks 20 million U.S. keywords, initially all in the home services category. This session highlights what really changed in these verticals after announced Google algorithm updates and what that could mean for your site. How the composition of local SERPs evolve over time and how rankings stay the same/differ between verticals and markets.

Key Takeaways

Here are a few key messages or insights that we gleaned from this session.

  • SEO is a moving target and is about reverse engineering Google’s ranking factors.
  • That said, there is some information that Google reveals that it is emphasizing, such as (recently) page speed and personalized and helpful content.
  • For example, the latter looks kindly on reviews because it’s unique content. Sites with reviews (even if gamed/automated), have grown in ranking over the past year.
  • So how do you get an SEO edge? There’s plenty of data out there, but not insights.
  • To gain more insights, LocalSEO guide looked at home services and 100k+ keywords, and some SERP results in the home services categories.
  • Top sites in the category are aggregators like Angi, and sites like Home Depot. Forbes.com surprisingly was one of the top sites, due to its listicle content (e.g., top 10 plumbers in Denver or cost guides) and reviews pulled in from Angi.
  • Reddit and other forum sites are also growing because the content is conducive to answering user questions. It’s very spammy, but these other factors make it rank well.
  • The point in all of this is that there are apparent anomalies, such as Forbes.com ranking well in home services. When those strange things happen, it’s an opportunity to see what they’re doing and how it can be replicated… a backdoor way of ranking well in competitive categories…

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SERP Summary – Tracking 20M Home Service Keywords

The LSG SERP Summary tracks 20 million U.S. keywords, initially all in the home services category. This session highlights what really changed in these verticals after announced Google algorithm updates and what that could mean for your site. How the composition of local SERPs evolve over time and how rankings stay the same/differ between verticals and markets.

Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide

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Picture of Mike Boland
Mike Boland
Mike Boland, senior analyst with Localogy, was one of Silicon Valley’s first tech reporters of the internet age as a staff reporter for Forbes magazine starting in 2000. His comments have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
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