Contractor Google Ads Location Targeting Tips: How To Use Different Suburb Pages to Get More Leads

Everyone keeps saying that Google Ads is the “easy” way to get leads, but every time you feel ready to launch a campaign there are more hoops to jump through – this time it’s talk of ‘suburb pages’ and it feels like a convenient upsell from commission-hungry salesmen.

It turns out suburb pages aren’t a scam, but a simple way to make your contractor Google Ads campaign more effective. When you optimize for Google Ads location targeting, you can lower your ad clicks and increase sales. Here’s how…

If you’re running a contractor Google Ads campaign, it makes sense you want to run ads targeting the area you actually serve.

Imagine you’re a locksmith in London, or Miami, or Melbourne.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what location you’re in .You don’t want your ads to be appearing when someone searches for an “emergency locksmith” in a city on the other side of the state or country. It’d be nice for those people to learn about your contractor, trade or home improvement business, but unless they want to pay you an 800 mile call-out fee, they’re probably not going to hire you.

To avoid this problem you can use geo targeting ads that allow your Google Ads campaign to hone in on specific locations. This could mean targeting an entire city, but you’ve also got the option to focus on individual suburbs and postcodes.

Targeting the right location is an important step in your tradie PPC campaign because it stops you from showing ads to the wrong customers. And having ads show up to people who don’t want your help can waste your daily budget if those ads get clicks, or hurt your Quality Score if people are seeing your ads but not clicking.

Once you’ve focused on a certain area, you’ll need to create location pages to match. That’s how you make local customers feel heard, and see you as their local expert.

In this article, we’ll explain how to generate consistent leads with a Google Ads campaign, tell you why different suburb pages are the key to more customers, and leave you with the steps to take next if you’re thinking of launching your own paid ads campaign.

Google Ads is quicker than SEO and can get you qualified leads within days, but there’s a roadblock you need to take into consideration…

Because the problem with most service-based industry keywords is that they’re competitive.

REALLY COMPETITIVE.

Because so many people are searching for plumbers and electricians and home improvement help, the cost-per-click (CPC) of each ad can be high. If you’re paying $2, $3, or $5 per ad click, you’ll need a high monthly budget to afford each ad click.

If you’re only competing for these broad keywords, you’ll burn through your daily ad spend real fast. Putting more pressure on your ad campaign, you’ll also be competing against the big boys in your industry who have more money to spend.

That doesn’t mean you can’t target those broad keywords, but there’s a way to spend less, avoid the high level of competition, and earn more customers at the same time.

It’s all possible by using Google Ads location targeting to focus on specific zip codes and suburbs.

Curious about keywords? Discover how many keywords we target per ad campaign

Let’s say you’re a landscaper in London.

The odds are you don’t want to drive out to Essex to give quotes on mowing a lawn. If your Google Ads aren’t targeted properly, customers with overgrown lawns in Essex could end up seeing your ads and clicking on them.

This wastes your ad spend on a lead who won’t become a customer – since it’s not worth your while to spend a full day trekking out west to mow a lawn.

To help you avoid these problems, Google Ads gives you control of where your ads can be seen – this is geo targeting. You can pick specific suburbs and postcodes, or target by radius. So you could set a radius of 30 miles to make sure your home improvement ads campaign would only be visible to customers in your local area.

Once you know which suburbs you want to target, you’ll need to create specific location pages for each suburb.

Your customer’s #1 concern is whether you can help them or not.

And what’s more helpful than searching for a contractor, trade or home improvement business in their local area and finding a page specifically about that local area?

The more granular and specific you are, the better your results are going to be. For example, if someone in London searches for ‘Patio Builder London’ and two similar results pop up, they’ll have to decide which page looks like it will be more helpful to them.

If one of those pages is about patio building in a broad sense, and the other is about patio building in the Fulham area they live in, which do you think they’ll prefer?

In this example, they wanted to find info about a new patio for their Fulham home, so it’s likely they’ll click on the page that is specifically about Fulham.

Most of your customers want to find businesses that are relevant to their search query. They don’t want to look for local home improvement services and then browse pages that don’t mention their local area.

Creating pages for the different suburbs you target is how you offer the most relevant results for your local customers. This starts by setting your targeting to make sure you’re only targeting local suburbs, then sending people to pages that show them you’re the local solution to their home improvement problems.

That’s how you use Google Ads location targeting to create the most helpful online experience.

If you’re a plumber in Miami you’re competing with a ton of other plumbers.

Because the competition is so high, the cost-per-click (CPC) for your ads might be upwards of $20.

But with specific suburb pages, you can target keywords related to individual suburbs, then send people to those pages to give them the most relevant content. Instead of ranking for ‘Miami plumber’ and paying $20 per ad click, you could rank for ‘Palmetto Bay plumber’ which is less contested, so the ads cost less.

Suddenly you’re paying $10 a click and you’ve just slashed your ad spend in half while targeting an audience more likely to be interested in your business.

In short, with more suburb pages you are:

• More relevant to local customers
• Saving money by targeting lower competition location keywords

The more granular your location pages, the more relevant they are.

It’s easy to look at a certain suburb, realize it will only deliver 10 monthly searches, and think “why bother creating a location page?” but little wins add up.

You might only have 10 people looking for your contractor, trade or home improvement business in some suburbs, but remember to look at the bigger picture – because specific locations come with less competition than the broad, city-wide keywords.

If you’ve got 10 service areas and 10 people searching for your services in each area, that’s 100 people coming to your contractor, trade or home improvement website.

It’s true one suburb page may not bring the same traffic as targeting an entire city, but when you’ve got multiple suburb pages you’ll be attracting local leads who feel like you understand them – after all, they went looking for help in their local suburb and you had an entire page just for them.

In short, you can use Google Ads postcode targeting to connect with local customers, make them feel like you understand them, and guide them towards contacting you for a quote.

Ready to get more work in your local suburb?

Click here to find out if you’re eligible to work with use