The five towns rule: how to pick the areas worth winning
Most landscape companies list every town within an hour’s drive and end up visible in none of them. A better approach is to pick about five priority towns, the ones where your best projects, budgets and proof already are, and go deep there first. Five is our rule of thumb, not a Google rule; the point is focus.
- Google lets service-area businesses list up to 20 service areas, and suggests the overall area stay within about two hours’ drive.
- Listing an area is not the same as being visible in it. Depth (pages, projects, reviews) wins a town.
- Pick towns by project value, proof and drive time, not by population alone.
Why fewer towns works better
Google Business Profile lets a service-area business list up to 20 service areas, and Google suggests the overall area shouldn’t be more than about two hours of driving from where the business is based. That tells Google where you work. It doesn’t make you the first name homeowners see there.
Visibility in a town comes from evidence: a page about your work in that town, finished projects there, reviews from clients who live there. Spread that evidence across forty towns and none of them gets enough. Concentrate it in five and you give Google and AI assistants a clear reason to name you.
How to choose your five
- Where your best projects already are. Look at your last 20 jobs over 30,000 dollars. Which towns keep coming up?
- Where homes and budgets fit your work. A town full of new-build lots with bare backyards can beat a bigger town with small yards.
- Where your crews can work profitably. If a town adds an hour of driving each day, winning it may cost more than it pays.
- Where the map is beatable. Search your main service in each town on Google Maps. If the top three have few reviews and thin profiles, that town is winnable.
- Where you already have proof. Projects you can photograph and clients you can ask for a review give you a head start.
What to build for each priority town
- One town page on your site: the services you sell there, two or three real projects with photos, and the questions homeowners there ask.
- Your Google profile’s service areas listing those towns, with your strongest town first in your own mind and your content.
- Reviews that mention the town. When a client in that town finishes a project, ask for a review and invite them to say where it was.
- Project posts on your Google profile tagged to the town in the text.
When to add more towns
Once you appear consistently in the top three on Google Maps for your main service in a priority town, and AI assistants start naming you there, move the next town onto the list. Grow from strength rather than starting everywhere at once.
Questions
Can I list towns I don’t actually serve to get more leads?
No. Only list areas you really serve. Leads from towns you can’t work in profitably waste your time and can hurt reviews.
Does my office address matter if I only work at clients’ homes?
Service-area businesses can hide their address and show service areas instead. Your location still matters, because the overall area should be within reach of where you are based.
See who the AI names in your area today.
Our free visibility check runs your company through Google Maps, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI answers for the towns you serve, and shows you what to fix first.
Get your free visibility check ↗Related service: Local SEO for landscape companies →
Next article: The Google Business Profile settings most landscapers leave empty →