Top 7 Mistakes Killing Local SEO Rankings

This week, I sat down with Fred Frusolone, CEO and founder of Market Sparks, a digital marketing agency that works across a mix of B2C and B2B clients. Steve came up through the IT ranks before moving into marketing and then digital marketing, launching Market Sparks almost seven years ago.

Market Sparks runs everything from web design and paid ads to SEO, conversion rate optimization, and a heavily LinkedIn-driven B2B business development program, with a team built by poaching specialists away from Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn themselves.

We covered why so many small businesses are leaving free Google visibility on the table, the ad mistake that quietly kills conversions, why full text ads are outperforming flashy video in some accounts, and why he thinks every business should be retargeting.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Steve that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. Start With a Full Assessment, Not a Tactic

Before recommending any channel, Market Sparks has new clients fill out a detailed questionnaire covering their goals, pain points, competition, and what they are willing to spend to acquire a customer. That data determines whether the strategy leans toward SEO for long-term positioning or paid ads for immediate business.

“We ask them about their competition, and we ask them how much they’re willing to spend to acquire a customer, and then we wrap an entire strategy around that.”

— Fred Frusolone

2. Sending Ad Traffic to Your Homepage Is a Bad Strategy

Steve calls out one of the most common mistakes he sees: businesses running ads and sending that traffic straight to their homepage. A homepage gives visitors too many outs, with menu items and competing calls to action, when the ad should be driving them to a landing page built around one specific action.

“One of the biggest mistakes we see all the time is that companies are running ads and they’re sending traffic to their homepage. That really to me is a very bad strategy because a homepage gives them so many outs.”

— Fred Frusolone

3. You Have Three to Six Seconds to Earn a Click

Steve says visitors decide whether to scroll or bounce within about three to six seconds, and the average website visitor leaves after only 1.7 clicks. That above the fold section has to communicate who you are, what you do, what problem you solve, and how to get started, almost instantly.

“You’ve got about three to six seconds before somebody’s going to decide if they’re going to scroll down your page or make a click on your page. You just can’t afford to have them digging around for information.”

— Fred Frusolone

4. Most Small Businesses Have Not Even Claimed Their Free Google Listing

Steve cites a figure showing that 59% of small businesses have not claimed their Google Business Profile, something that costs nothing to fix. Beyond that, keeping your business data consistent across the 50 to 70 directories a home service company typically appears on matters too, since Google treats inconsistent listings as a ranking mark against you.

“The last figure I saw was like 59% of small businesses haven’t even claimed their Google business profile. That’s free to do. There’s no reason that a business shouldn’t do that.”

— Fred Frusolone

5. On Page and Off Page SEO Both Matter, and So Does Bing

Steve breaks SEO into on page work, like site structure, sitemaps, and canonical URLs, and off page work, like backlinks from high authority sites. He also points out that Bing processes about four billion searches a day thanks to corporate Microsoft Outlook installs, so businesses that only optimize for Google are leaving a real audience untouched.

“Bing is processing about four billion searches a day right now. You’ve got a lot of corporate implementations of Microsoft Outlook, and Bing is the underlying search engine there. So you’ve got to target not only Google but Bing as well.”

— Fred Frusolone

6. Full Text Ads Are Quietly Outperforming Flashy Video

Market Sparks tests every ad format constantly, and Steve says full text ads have been surprisingly some of their highest performers, a shift from a few years ago when everything was about visual content. His advice is to lead with a story, then follow up with video for people who already engaged with the text version.

“We surprisingly have amazing, maybe the highest success with full text ads, which kind of goes against where things were two or three years ago, right? Everything was about visual content.”

— Fred Frusolone

7. Retargeting and Buyer Personas Turn Warm Leads Into Customers

Steve believes every company should be retargeting website visitors through tools like the Facebook pixel or LinkedIn’s insight tag, since those visitors have already shown interest. He also notes that almost none of the small businesses he talks to have ever built out buyer personas, even though that groundwork determines which platforms and messaging will actually convert.

“I bet 99% of small businesses have never even heard of a buyer persona. There’s very few one click buyers these days, so you’ve got to come at them from multiple channels.”

— Fred Frusolone

Looking Ahead

Steve’s biggest piece of advice for a home service owner ready to move beyond referrals and postcards is to get educated before spending a dollar. That means understanding your customer lifetime value, sales cycle, and what you can afford to pay to acquire a customer, then finding a reputable company to guide the strategy rather than piecing it together from a random search.

“Don’t just Google it, because you’re going to find 5,000 different ways. Find a reputable company. I really do think that there’s so many opportunities for these businesses that they just don’t realize.”

— Fred Frusolone