Home Services SEO Case Study: Growing HVAC Local Pack Rankings

This client is a residential HVAC company competing against national franchises and multi-location competitors with far larger marketing budgets. The brief was to win visibility where homeowners actually search when something breaks: local, service-specific queries where a same-day response matters more than brand recognition.

The strategy prioritized the Google Local Pack, the three-listing map result homeowners see before they ever scroll to organic listings, alongside supporting service and service-area content built against what was already ranking for each query. Keyword targeting followed an avalanche approach: attainable, lower-competition service-and-location terms first, building authority toward more competitive terms as the site’s local relevance grew.

In roughly ten months, keywords appearing in the Local Pack grew from 35 to 108, nearly tripling the number of searches where this business shows up in the map result before a single organic listing. Page-one visibility followed the same trajectory: keywords ranking in the Google Top 10 nearly doubled, and the site’s total ranking-keyword footprint grew by more than half. That visibility has translated directly into the business: booked jobs are up 58.25% and revenue is up 127.46% year to date.

Local Pack keywords reflect SEMrush’s Position Type classification and are counted separately from standard organic rankings. Booked jobs and revenue figures are client-reported year-to-date growth. Engagement is ongoing; SEO figures reflect growth from October 2025 through August 2026.