US search results for SEO help are crowded with agencies and directory listings. The same is true in most service categories: a plumber in Texas is up against Angi, Yelp, Thumbtack and national franchises before reaching other plumbers.
That shapes the work. A US business rarely wins by going broad. It wins by owning a defined area or a defined category:
- Service businesses: one city or metro, the suburbs the trucks actually cover, and a Google Business Profile that matches.
- Multi-location businesses: a profile and a page for each location, with reporting split by location.
- Ecommerce and SaaS: category and comparison pages. National product searches don't care where you're based.