Pest Control Digital Marketing: What to Set Up First

Pest control digital marketing starts with a Google Business Profile, a steady flow of reviews and Local Services Ads. Under about $500K a year, that’s where most of your effort belongs. Past that, add Google Ads and put real money into your website and SEO. Track every call back to its source from the first day.

Set up pest control digital marketing in this order

Almost every pest control company I work with ends up with the same core pieces online, and each one leans on the one before it.

A Google Business Profile for each real location, with a post every week
A way to ask every customer for a review
Call tracking, before any ad money goes out
Local Services Ads
A simple website that turns visits into calls
Past about $500K a year: Google Ads, service and city pages, and SEO
Social media and email

They feed each other. Local Services Ads are tied to your Business Profile, and in the new Google Ads setup your name, address and hours sync straight from it. Your profile links to your website, and your Google Ads send people to its pages. Reviews help the profile rank, help the ads convert and give AI tools something to pull from. Skip a step and the next one costs more or works worse.

This post covers the online side only. Referrals, partnerships, door hangers and the rest of the plan are in my guide to pest control marketing.

Start with your Google Business Profile

Your Business Profile is what shows up in the map pack and on Google Maps, and it’s free. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking,” according to its own help page on local ranking. You can’t move your office closer to every searcher, so the work goes into the other two.

Get the basics right. Use “Pest control service” as your primary category and add secondary categories only for services you actually do. Set hours that match when someone really answers the phone. Upload real photos of your techs, trucks and work instead of stock images. Link the profile to the page about its city: for your main office that’s usually the homepage, built around your home city, and any other office gets its own location page. And only create a profile for a real, staffed location, because virtual offices are how profiles get suspended.

On audits, I often find the wrong primary category or hours nobody has touched in years.

One of our clients, Arete Pest Control in Norcross, Georgia, saw Google Business Profile calls go up 57%, with 441 calls in the 4 weeks from Jan 27 to Feb 24, 2025, compared with the 4 weeks before (CallRail). SmartGreen Pest Control in Woodstock, Georgia went from an average map rank of 8.0 to 1.0 on a 7x7 grid three months later. I explain those grids in how to use a 5x5 heatmap for local SEO. If you’d rather hand this off, it’s what our Google Business Profile service does.

Build a website that turns visits into calls

Your website has two jobs. It gives Google pages to rank for each service and town, and it gets the people who land there to call. Under about $500K a year, a simple site with your main services and a big phone button is enough. Build out the rest once you’re past that.

A pest control site needs a page for each main service, like general pest, termites, rodents, mosquitoes and bed bugs, plus wildlife if you do it. It needs a page for each town you want calls from, written about that town. Put your phone number in a big button at the top right, written out so desktop visitors can type it into their phones. Put a short form in the first or second section of every landing page and ask for as little as you can. Use photos of your real team, show reviews on every service and city page, and make sure pages load fast on a phone. Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool will tell you.

Most pest control websites I audit share the same few problems. City pages are copy-pasted with the town name swapped, so the homepage ends up ranking for every city search instead. Headings are broken, title tags leave out the city, and both the www and non-www versions of the site load. My pest control SEO tips show how to check for each of these and fix them.

Sometimes a rebuild is the faster fix. After we built Invicta Pest Control in Raleigh, North Carolina a new website, it got 3.4 times the organic clicks, comparing the same months year over year (Search Console). Whoever builds your site, the domain and the site itself should be in your name. That’s how we do website design for clients, and website maintenance keeps the site fast and secure after launch.

Reviews feed every other channel

Reviews help your profile rank, as Google says above. They also weigh heavily in how Local Services Ads rank and convert, and they’re the first thing a homeowner reads before deciding whether to call. Google prefers its own reviews, but ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI tools pull from sites all over the web, so Facebook, Nextdoor and the Better Business Bureau count too.

Steady beats a burst. I’d aim for about one new review a week for each profile. The easiest way to get there is a review tool connected to your CRM that texts the customer a link right after the service, plus a reply from you on every review. Google says replying shows customers you value their feedback.

Reviews get earned at the house. Chris Anderson of Applause told me reviews start with your technicians, with little things like shutting the gate and writing detailed service notes the customer can read afterward. Plenty of companies pay techs a bonus per review. Be careful with that. Google’s review policy says businesses shouldn’t ask staff to collect a set number of reviews or ask for reviews that name a staff member, so I’d reward great service, not review counts.

Local Services Ads and Google Ads in late 2026

Local Services Ads charge per lead and usually sit at the very top of a pest control search. Google Ads charge per click on keywords you pick, and most growing companies end up running both.

Local Services Ads are also in the middle of a big change. In August 2026, Google started moving them into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns built for pay-per-lead goals, beginning with a limited group of US advertisers and adding more later in the year, according to Search Engine Journal’s report on the move. You still pay for valid leads, not clicks, but the standalone dashboard goes away and historical reports don’t carry over, so download yours before your account moves. What changes and what to check afterward are in my guide to Google Ads for pest control.

For Google Ads, pick service and city keywords people actually search, like “pest control” plus the town, and send each ad group to the page that matches. When Mat Rogers came on the show, he described Google’s AI Max campaigns as paid SEO, because page quality and site structure now count toward ad performance too. My favorite ad copy calls out the pest and the town, then makes an offer. That same guide covers campaign structure and keywords, and our Google Ads service runs search campaigns if you’d rather not run them yourself.

SEO is slow, and it compounds

For a pest control company, SEO means ranking your Business Profile in the map pack across your towns and ranking your website pages for each service and town. If you’ve barely done any, it can take about 6 months to see real results and up to 12 to see a return.

It does pay off. EcoCare Pest Control in Portland, Oregon saw qualified SEO calls go up 216% in the first 6 months (CallRail).

A few things move it most. City pages need to be written about each town, not copied. Links should come from local places that know you, like your chamber of commerce, events you sponsor, home inspectors and realtors, instead of spammy directories that add nothing. Blog posts should answer what homeowners in your area ask and link to your service and city pages. With AI Overviews at the top of so many searches now, pages that answer the question plainly and early have a better shot at getting cited.

When you’re ready to reach towns farther from your office, read building local SEO outside your core location. All of this together is what I mean by pest control SEO.

Track every call to its source

Call tracking is how you know whether everything else is working. Every month you should be able to answer how many calls you got, how that compares with last month and the same month last year, and which sources sent them.

I recommend CallRail. Give each lead source its own tracking number, which usually means one for the website, one for each Google Business Profile and one for each Local Services Ads account, with more for Facebook, Yelp or a door hanger campaign. On your website, dynamic number insertion shows a different number depending on where the visitor came from, so organic visitors and Google Ads clicks get counted separately.

On a Business Profile, put the tracking number in the primary phone field and your main line as an additional number. Everywhere else, keep one main number. A mix of tracking numbers across your schema and directory listings is one of the inconsistencies I flag on audits.

Then connect calls to customers. Record calls and listen to a few every week, because that’s where you hear the leads your office is losing. Set the lead source in FieldRoutes or PestPac on every new customer so you can see which channels bring in customers who stay, and what each one costs.

Claim your profiles on the networks Google lets you add to your Business Profile, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn, and use the same name, logo and details everywhere. Post real video of your techs and your town. Mat told me to load a video to TikTok and let it roll down to Instagram and Facebook, so one piece lives in three places.

Paid social is a different animal from Google. People scrolling Facebook weren’t looking for pest control, so they close at a lower rate than someone who searched. My partner Jake Sheldon told me to start with Facebook lead ads, not boosted posts, and I compare Facebook with the other paid channels in pest control advertising.

Email and text work best on people who already know you. Send renewal reminders, seasonal add-ons and referral asks to current customers, and text new web leads the moment a form comes in. Ask for one thing per message.

What changes as the company grows

Digital marketing for pest control looks different for a one-truck company than for one with five offices. Under about $500K a year, I’d put most of your effort into two things: your Google Business Profile, with a post every week and a steady flow of reviews, and Local Services Ads. A simple website covers the rest, and an owner or office manager can run all of it.

Past that, start on Google Ads next to your Local Services Ads, put real money into the website and SEO, and grow every channel with the company. Each new staffed office gets its own profile, its own tracking number, its own location page and its own ad coverage, and city pages spread outward as your routes do. Keep every account in your company’s name. The stage-by-stage plan, offline work included, is in my pest control marketing guide.

Questions pest control owners ask

How long does pest control digital marketing take to work?

Local Services Ads and Google Ads can bring calls within days of going live. Profile and website fixes usually show up over a few months, and SEO takes about 6 months to show real results if you’re starting from very little.

Should I keep running Local Services Ads after they move into Google Ads?

For most pest control companies, yes. You still pay per lead, and those leads still come from people searching for pest control right now.

What should I spend on first if money is tight?

Your Business Profile and reviews cost nothing but time. After that, I’d put money into Local Services Ads, since you pay for valid leads instead of clicks.

Can I handle digital marketing myself?

You can set up your Business Profile, ask for reviews and put in call tracking yourself. Building the website, SEO and managing ads take more time and know-how, so most owners hand those off once they can. If you want to do it in-house with someone checking your work, I also do paid consulting, and you can book a call to talk it through.