Most keyword lists start in a research tool. For a local contractor that is the wrong end, because the tool knows what people search and nothing at all about which of those jobs you want.
Your invoices know both.
Start with the jobs you want more of
Pull last year’s completed work and sort it by profit, not by count. Then ask three questions:
- Which job types made the most money? Not the most revenue: the most margin after the truck, the tech and the parts.
- Which do you want fewer of? Most contractors have one or two job types they take out of habit and lose on.
- Which came from a customer who then bought something else? A cheap first job that leads to a replacement is worth more than its own invoice.
That ranking is your bidding priority. It is specific to your business, and no tool can produce it.
Volume is the wrong measure locally
A keyword tool will tell you a term has 40 searches a month and steer you away. But 40 local searches for “sewer line replacement” from homeowners with a failing lateral is a better month than 5,000 for “plumbing tips”.
Two further problems with tool volume in a local account: the figures are national or regional and rarely reflect your city, and they are rounded into buckets that hide exactly the small, high-intent terms a contractor wants.
Judge a keyword by what the searcher appears to want and what that job is worth to you, then let your own conversion data correct you.
Read the qualifier, not just the service
The words attached to a service name tell you more about intent than the service does:
- “near me”, “open now”, “emergency”, “24 hour”: ready to call, expensive, converts fast.
- “cost”, “price”, “how much”: comparing. Worth having, but the landing page needs a number or a range or they bounce.
- “best”, “reviews”, “vs”, choosing between companies. Your reviews do the work here.
- “how to”, “DIY”, “fix”, not a customer. Block it.
- “who is responsible”, “does insurance cover”: researching liability, often not ready. Usually block.
Group by qualifier rather than by service, and your ad copy and landing pages can actually match what the person wanted.
Bid on your own name
Cheap, and competitors bid on it. If someone searches your company by name they are a warm lead who saw your van or was given your name, and losing them to a rival’s ad at the top of the page is the least necessary loss in the account.
Whether to bid on competitors’ names is a judgement call. It is permitted, it works, and it is expensive because their quality score on their own name beats yours.
Let the search terms report rewrite your list
Your starting list is a hypothesis. What people actually type is the data, and it will differ.
Read the search terms report weekly at first. You are looking for two things: phrasings worth adding as their own keywords, and the waste that needs blocking. Both matter, and most accounts only ever do the second, see how match types govern what you see in that report.
Seasons change the list
The terms that matter in July are not the terms that matter in January, and an account left on one fixed list spends the shoulder months bidding for demand that has moved.
Review the list at each seasonal turn rather than annually, and shift budget towards what people are searching now.
Frequently asked questions
Where should a contractor’s keyword list come from?
From your own completed jobs, sorted by margin rather than count. A keyword tool knows what people search and nothing about which of those jobs is profitable for you.
Should I chase high-volume keywords?
Usually not. Tool volume is national or regional, rounded into buckets, and hides the small high-intent terms that matter locally. Forty searches from homeowners with a failing sewer line beat five thousand for general tips.
How should I group keywords?
By the qualifier attached to the service, emergency and “near me” separately from “cost” and “price”, and both separately from “best” and “reviews”. Those signal different stages and need different pages.
Should I bid on my own company name?
Yes. It is inexpensive, competitors do bid on it, and someone searching your name is already a warm lead. Losing them to a rival’s ad is the most avoidable loss in the account.
Where to start
Sort last year’s jobs by margin and write down the top five. That list, not a tool’s suggestions, is where your budget should be pointed.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our pay-per-click management or book a strategy call.