The season is real, and it is the easiest thing in this industry to sell a calendar against. The published ones rarely say where their dates came from. Rank Nashville is a Nashville search agency working across Middle Tennessee, and we take one landscaping company per service zone. If yours is open, the first conversation is about what your numbers say rather than what the industry average says. Call (615) 988-1309 or tell us which zones you run.
The Calendar You Were Sold
One of the few dated benchmarks this industry has comes from Evergrow Marketing, an agency that runs Google Ads for lawn care and landscaping companies. In 2024 they published benchmarks from 61 accounts spending a combined total of more than $225,000. The headline that travels: search volume peaks in April.
The part that gets left out is the rest of the article. Their figures put February at the lowest cost per lead of the year and the highest conversion rate, on close to the smallest spend. They give two reasons for it and flag only one as a guess.
The confident one is mechanical. In February your competitors have not switched their ads on yet, so visibility is cheap and the searcher has fewer people to choose from. The guess, which they label as a guess, is that off-season searchers are the serious ones, since no warm weekend pushed them into it. That distinction matters more than it looks. If February performs because the auction is empty rather than because February buyers are different, then it is even less of a calendar worth copying.
Their published takeaway is a three-budget year. Minimum from December through February. Maximum from March through May. Average the rest of the way.
So the study does not tell you to get in early, and it does not tell you to stay out. It says the volume was in April and the conversion rate was highest in February, in one agency’s accounts, in one year.
What it does not say, anywhere, is when your content should be live. It is a report on Google Ads spend and performance from one agency’s client base in 2024, nationally. So when a proposal says your spring pages must publish by mid-January because homeowners start searching in late February, those dates are not in that study, and we have not found the study they are in.
Three Line Items You Will Not See on Our Invoice
Three things get billed as ranking work in this industry without evidence strong or consistent enough to support the sale. We would rather cut them from our own scope than take money for them.
Geotagging your project photos
Sterling Sky ran a controlled test on five Business Profiles, three manually geotagged images each, and found no measurable impact on local pack rankings. Geotagged images on the business website moved nothing organically either. During that test they found a mechanical detail worth knowing: the Business Profile stripped the geotags off the photos after upload, and a former Google employee told them the tagging happens on upload so the metadata stops mattering. That is an explanation, not a proof, and Sterling Sky’s own comment thread contains people arguing Google may still read the data before discarding it. A bigger test went further and found something more interesting than nothing. Over ten weeks, the founder of Evergrow Marketing, the same agency whose spend data appears earlier on this page, geotagged images across 27 of his own lawn care clients. Targeted towns did gain on “near me” queries, positively and with statistical significance. The same towns lost rank on queries that named the town. Across seven metrics, one improved, six did not, and four of those six went backwards. His conclusion was that it helps where you point it and hurts everywhere you do not, which is why his agency stopped doing it for clients. Google’s own local ranking guidance does not mention geotagging anywhere.
Posting on a schedule to signal activity
Sterling Sky posted weekly for nine weeks and tracked 441 keywords per location. No measurable movement in the local pack. Their own conclusion is the part that matters, because it is not “stop posting”: they still recommend the feature, as a way to convert and to say something to a customer, not as a way to rank. We agree with that, and posting can sit in scope on those terms. What it will not do is appear on an invoice as a ranking service.
Dumping photos on the profile to rank
Sterling Sky tested four profiles across four industries, and one of them was a lawn care company. They uploaded photos of exactly what the company was tracking: lawns, weeds, poison ivy, mosquito treatment, lawns being sprayed. Nothing moved in the local pack. Google often did not even show the photos they added and fell back on the cover image.
None of this proves a negative. The samples are small, some of the tests are a few years old, and the one real effect anyone found came with a cost attached. What it adds up to is that we have not found evidence repeatable enough to sell these as ranking services, and that is the bar for our invoice. Google’s published local ranking guidance names relevance, distance, and popularity, says outright that a better local ranking cannot be requested or paid for, and keeps the details confidential. Photos still belong on your profile, and Google’s own tips list them, for the reason Google gives: they show a homeowner what you actually do. That is reason enough without a ranking claim attached.
Open Your Profile Right Now
In 2022, YDOP counted what was actually on 41,484 Google Business Profiles across landscapers, nurseries, and garden centers in the United States. The study is four years old and it is a count, not a ranking test, which is exactly what makes it useful here. Nobody is claiming these numbers cause anything. They describe the field you are standing in.
Open your profile in another tab and check each row. Two of them are benchmarks rather than targets, and the table says which.
| Check on your profile | What the count found across 41,484 green-industry profiles, 2022 |
|---|---|
| Verified by the owner | 25.48% were not verified by the owner |
| Links to your website | 29.66% linked to no website at all |
| That link is secure | 37.52% of the profiles with a link pointed at an unsecure site |
| Address visibility, which depends on your business type | 30.60% did not show an address. If you do not serve customers at your address, Google requires you to remove it and show a service area instead, so this row is not a target |
| Primary category, chosen for your actual work rather than the crowd | 62.33% of landscapers used Landscaper. A benchmark, not an instruction |
| Reviews | Landscapers averaged 21 reviews at 4.45 stars |
| Photos | Landscapers averaged 70 photos, garden centers 44 |
Now read the review line with the rest of the same study attached: 46% of these profiles had five reviews or fewer. YDOP goes on to say that six reviews therefore puts you in the top half, which is a step further than the number carries. What the count supports is narrower and still worth taping to a wall: on the profiles they measured, nearly half sat at five reviews or fewer, and the average was 21.
That is what makes the geotag argument expensive. The field debates whether stripped metadata moves a pin. On the profiles in this count, a quarter were not verified by the owner and three in ten had no website attached at all.
Where Your Calendar Is Actually Written
Your season does not run on a national average. It runs on your zones, your crews, your weather, and your customers, and most of it is already recorded in accounts you can read today.
Start with the profile. It reports call-button taps, direction requests, and website clicks by month. Those are actions on the profile rather than completed calls, and the profile is Google’s to change or suspend, so read it as a signal you can watch rather than an asset you hold.
Then the search side. Search Console shows which queries actually surfaced your pages, and when. One limit is worth stating plainly, because this gets sold as a demand curve and it is not one. The report records the appearances your site earned. A quiet quarter can mean nobody searched, or that you never surfaced, or that your filters and date range are hiding the tail. The number nobody else has is in your own records: the date the customer actually committed. For a design and install job that is the deposit. For a maintenance contract it is the signed agreement, for a commercial account the approved bid, and for some lawn care models there is no deposit at all and the first recurring service date is the closest thing you have. Whichever it is for you, that date rather than the day the crew showed up is the one your content has to be ahead of.
Two comparable seasons of consistently tracked first-party data are usually more useful for your own timing than a national benchmark, because it is the only record that describes your company. Comparable is doing work in that sentence: if the weather broke, the crew count changed, the service mix moved, or one large project distorted the year, the comparison needs saying so rather than averaging it away. If you want the underlying method rather than the landscaping-specific version, our seasonal SEO guide covers the decision system this page deliberately does not repeat.
Your Zones and Your Actual Work
We build zone content around the work you have really done, in the places you really run crews, with photos from those jobs.
What we will not do is write that Brentwood homeowners expect one thing and Antioch homeowners expect another. We do not know that. Neither does the agency that put it in a proposal, and a page built on it is a page built on a guess about people, published under your name. A zone earns a page when you have real jobs and real photos there, and when a homeowner searching in that zone would find something on it they could not find on your main service page. If not, it stays a section, and your budget goes to a zone where you actually run trucks.
Platform Leads and the Channel You Own
Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack sell you leads. The platform sets the price, the sharing rules depend on the product you bought, and the flow depends on you continuing to pay. That is not an argument for cancelling them. Plenty of good companies run them profitably alongside everything else, and a lead that closes is a lead that closes.
It is an argument for knowing which parts of your pipeline sit on whose terms. Your website and domain are the parts you control most directly, subject to your registration, your contracts, and who holds the credentials and the licences. Your Business Profile is a different thing: Google owns the platform, sets the rules, and can suspend it. A review history sits on that same platform, real but not portable. None of that is an argument against any of them; it is an argument for knowing which is which before you build your whole pipeline on one.
One Landscaping Company Per Service Zone
One company per zone. That is the entire rule at Rank Nashville, and the reason is conflict rather than generosity: two landscapers in the same zone are competing for the same local searches, and one agency cannot work both sides of that and be honest about it.
The rule has a cost on our side, which is the point: it means a zone can be closed to a company we would otherwise want.
Questions Landscapers Ask
When should I actually start?
Not on the calendar somebody sold you. Starting is a capacity question before it is a season question: work published in a quiet month is work that exists when the season turns, which is the real argument for winter, not a claim that homeowners are searching in February. What we will not do is attach a payoff date to it.
What do you do in the winter?
The unglamorous half, which is most of the value. Profile verification and cleanup, the review process, the pages you never had time to write, the zone content that needs photos from jobs you finished in October. For a company whose winter is genuinely quiet, it is the stretch with enough slack to fix what broke all season. For one running snow, tree work, or commercial contracts, it is not, and the plan has to say so.
Should I drop Angi or HomeAdvisor?
Not on our advice, and not as a condition of working with us. Run them as long as they pay. That is a harder test than whether the leads close: a lead that closes can still lose money once you count acquisition cost against the margin on the job and the crew hours it ate. The question worth asking is what happens to your call volume the month you stop paying, and whether anything you own would still be standing.
Who takes the photos?
Your crew, on a phone, at the end of a job. That is not a compromise, it is the actual advantage: nobody else has your work. The part we handle is what surrounds those photos, where they live, and what they are called.
Is my zone still available?
Ask on the first call, before anything else gets discussed. If the zone is committed, that is the answer, and it is better heard immediately than after a proposal.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
We will not give you a date for rankings or for calls, because we would be making it up. Cost follows scope: how many zones, how much of the site has to be rebuilt versus written, how much of the profile and review work is already in place. You will see the zone count and the number on paper first.
Find Out What Your Own Numbers Say
The first thing worth doing is not a proposal. It is a look at your profile, your Search Console, and your zones, so the conversation starts from your data rather than from a national average with an agency’s name on it.
Call (615) 988-1309 or tell us which zones you run.
Nick Rizkalla leads search strategy at Rank Nashville and has worked in search for more than 14 years.
Sources
- Local ranking: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, Google Business Profile Help. Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity; a better ranking cannot be requested or paid for; adding photos is listed among the tips as a way to show customers what you offer.
- Seasonal spend and performance: 2024 Landscaping and Lawn Care Google Ads Benchmarks, Evergrow Marketing. 61 accounts, more than $225,000 in 2024. April carried the most volume; February carried the lowest cost per lead and the highest conversion rate; the published budget guidance is minimum December to February, maximum March to May. Google Ads spend and performance data, not organic search volume and not Nashville. A 2025 edition has since been published.
- Profile benchmarks: Guide to Google Business Profiles for Landscapers, YDOP. A 2022 count of 41,484 profiles across landscapers, nurseries, and garden centers in the United States.
- Address and service areas: Manage your service areas for service-area and hybrid businesses, Google Business Profile Help. If you do not serve customers at your business address, Google requires you to remove the address and set a service area instead.
- Profile metrics: Business Profile performance reporting, Google Business Profile Help. What the profile counts as an interaction, including call-button clicks rather than completed calls.
- Search metrics: Performance report, Search Console Help. What impressions and clicks measure, and what they do not.
- Geotagging: Does Geotagging Photos Influence Ranking?, Sterling Sky. Five Business Profiles, three geotagged images each; the profile stripped the geotags on upload. And a ten-week test across 27 lawn care clients, published in Search Engine Land by the founder of Evergrow Marketing: a positive, statistically significant lift on targeted “near me” queries, losses on queries naming the town, one of seven metrics improved, and the author’s own decision to stop. Controlled agency tests, not Google statements.
- Posts: Do Google Posts Impact Ranking?, Sterling Sky. One post per week for nine weeks, 441 keywords tracked per location; the agency still recommends posting, for conversions rather than ranking.
- Profile photos: Does Adding Photos in Google My Business Increase Ranking?, Sterling Sky. Four profiles across four industries, one of them lawn care.
Sources last checked July 2026. Publication dates are kept visible above because these benchmarks and platform features change, and we recheck them rather than asking you to.