Google Ads Management in Columbus, Ohio

Priced on cost per booked job, not cost per click.

Ads are the fastest way to get the phone ringing and the easiest way to burn a budget. Most accounts we take over are paying for searches that were never going to become customers, with no way to tell which clicks turned into jobs. We rebuild around the terms that book work, cut the waste weekly, and report on what the calls cost you rather than what the clicks did.

Core Web Vitals Conversion copy Mobile first Forms and tracking Schema

Week one

Leads start arriving, unlike organic.

Weekly

Search terms reviewed and waste cut.

Cost per job

The number we actually report on.

Google Ads Experts

100+ sites built and Ranked
$ 3 Million in Ad Spend
4.9 star on google

Get a practical website Plan

Tell us what you want to grow. We will review your website, search visibility, lead flow, tracking, and the clearest next steps.

We learn what growth means

Your services, goals, competition, current website, and what a better lead looks like.

We review what is holding leads back

Website design, SEO structure, Google Ads readiness, AI search clarity, and conversion tracking.

You get a clear path forward

Plain English recommendations, realistic priorities, and no confusing agency language.

Cheap clicks are not the goal

An account can cut its cost per click in half and book fewer jobs, because the cheap traffic is cheap for a reason. What matters is what a booked job costs you and whether that number sits under what the job is worth. Everything in the account gets judged against that, including the parts that look good in the Google interface.

Intent

Who is ready now

Emergency and same day searches convert at a completely different rate to research searches. They deserve different budgets, different ad copy and different landing pages, and most accounts run them all together.

Waste

What you are paying for

Broad match will show your ad to people looking for DIY tutorials, jobs, and your competitors by name. A proper negative list is the single biggest lever in most accounts we inherit.

Tracking

What actually booked

Without call tracking tied back to search terms you are optimizing on form fills and guesswork, while most of your real leads come in by phone and never get counted.

Map stacking, shown on a grid

A single average position hides the truth. We scan a nine point grid across your
service area so you can see exactly which suburbs you own and which ones you
have never appeared in.

AVERAGE GRID RANK
19.4 1.3
GRID POINTS IN TOP 3
0 of 9 9 of 9
CALLS FROM MAPS
44 175
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Profile insights

Calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile.

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Grid scan history

Every scan since we started, suburb by suburb.

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Call log, scored

Tracked calls tied back to the map listing that produced them.

What is included

Six workstreams aimed squarely at the map pack. Each one has an output you can
point at in the dashboard.

01

Account audit and rebuild

Existing campaigns reviewed, waste identified, and the account restructured around service and intent instead of whatever it grew into.

Structure Waste audit Rebuild
02

Local Services Ads

Google Guaranteed setup and management where your trade qualifies. LSA sits above everything and is billed per lead rather than per click.

Google Guaranteed Per lead Disputes
03

Search campaigns

Tight ad groups, exact and phrase match on the terms that book work, ad copy written per service rather than one message for everything.

Ad groups Ad copy Extensions
04

Negative keyword management

Search term reports reviewed weekly, with everything that will never become a customer cut before it spends more of your budget.

Weekly review Negatives Waste cuts
05

Landing pages

Ads pointed at pages built for that specific service, not at a homepage that makes the visitor go looking. Quality Score improves and so does the conversion rate.

Per service Fast load Clear CTA
06

Call tracking and reporting

Every call recorded and tied back to the search term that produced it, scored as a lead or not, and reported monthly as cost per booked job.

Recording Attribution Cost per job

Reviews are a ranking factor, not a vanity metric

Volume, recency, rating and whether you reply all feed the map pack. A business with 180 recent reviews and an owner who answers them will outrank a better company with 40 reviews from 2021, every time.

We automate the ask after every completed job, route unhappy customers to you privately first, and draft a reply to every review that lands.

88%

Read reviews before calling a local business

3 mo

How quickly a review starts losing weight

2x

Reply rate lift when the owner answers

Job marked complete

The request goes out by text within the hour, while the work is still fresh.

Unhappy customers routed to you

A private form first, so problems reach you before they reach Google.

Every review answered

We draft the reply, you approve it. Google reads the replies too.

What the first six months actually look like

A standard build runs three to four weeks. Bigger sites with a page per service and per suburb take longer, and we will say so before you pay.

WEEK ONE

Audit and build

Account audited or built from scratch, conversion and call tracking installed, initial negative list applied before a dollar goes out.

EXPECT TO SEE

Campaigns live and tracking clean

WEEKS 2 TO 4

Learning and cutting

Search terms reviewed every week, negatives added, bids adjusted, weak ad copy replaced.

EXPECT TO SEE

Cost per lead starting to settle

MONTHS 2 TO 3

Landing pages and scale

Dedicated landing pages built for the top services, budget shifted toward what is booking.

EXPECT TO SEE

Cost per booked job you can plan around

ONGOING

Defend and expand

Competitor movement watched, seasonal shifts anticipated, budget expanded into the services and suburbs that respond.

EXPECT TO SEE

Predictable lead flow you can staff to

Six months on, four trades

A single average position hides the truth. We scan a nine point grid across your
service area so you can see exactly which suburbs you own and which ones you
have never appeared in.

Roofing

Columbus and Dublin
6 months
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1.3

Avg grid rank, from 19.4

175

Calls a month, from 44

189

Reviews, from 61

HVAC

Westerville and Powell
8 months
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9 of 9

Grid points in top three

132

Booked jobs a month

4.9

Rating, from 4.3

Plumbing

Hilliard and Gahanna
5 months
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#1

Emergency plumber, 3 suburbs

89

Calls a month, from 21

62%

Calls now from Maps

Landscaping

New Albany and Delaware
7 months
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7 mi

Ranking radius, from 2 mi

64

Quote requests a month

3.8x

Return on retainer

Built for home service companies

Every trade searches differently. A burst pipe is an emergency search on a phone at
11pm, a kitchen remodel is six weeks of research on a laptop. We build the strategy
around which one you sell.

Roofing

Storm season spikes, high ticket, insurance driven

HVAC

Two hard seasons, maintenance plans in between

Plumbing

Emergency intent, mobile, decided in minutes

Electrical

Trust and licensing questions dominate

Landscaping

Seasonal, visual, review and photo led

Garage doors

Broken spring today, replacement next month

Pest control

Recurring contracts, fast response wins

Remodeling

Long research cycle, portfolio is the pitch

How we build Google Ads campaigns that pay for themselves

Google will happily spend your budget on searches that were never going to call. The Nerds SEO builds every Columbus, Ohio account around the few searches that end in a booked job, then cuts the rest out.

Keyword intent and negative keyword lists

Emergency plumber near me is a customer. Plumber salary and plumbing courses are not, and both will spend your money. We build the negative list before the campaign goes live, then prune it weekly from the actual search terms report.

Campaign structure by service and margin

One campaign per service, not one campaign for everything. Budget follows margin, so the high ticket jobs get the spend and the cheap call outs stop eating it. Broken structure is the most common problem in the accounts we inherit.

Geographic targeting across Central Ohio

Radius targeting wastes money on suburbs you will not drive to. We target the Columbus, Ohio suburbs you actually serve, bid them separately, and exclude the ones where the job does not cover the trip.

Timeline. Paid search produces calls in the first week, unlike SEO. The first month is about finding which terms convert, the second is about cutting everything that does not.

Where wasted Google Ads spend actually goes

When we audit a Columbus account, a third to a half of the budget is usually going somewhere the owner would stop immediately if anyone showed them. It is almost always the same five places.

The five leaks we find in nearly every account

  • Broad match with no negatives. Paying for job seekers, students and people in another state.
  • Smart campaigns left on default. Google's autopilot optimising for clicks you cannot invoice.
  • Ads pointing at the homepage. The searcher asked about one service and lands on a menu of nine.
  • Conversions counting the wrong thing. Page views and clicks to call logged as leads, so the data is fiction.
  • Ads running at 2am. Emergency trades should bid then. Everyone else is paying for voicemail.

Where the spend goes instead

Into a shorter list of exact and phrase match terms, higher bids on the hours you answer the phone, and the suburbs that produce work. Smaller reach, more jobs, usually on the same budget.

The first thirty days with The Nerds SEO

Week one: audit and tracking

Full account audit, call tracking installed, conversions rebuilt so a lead means a real enquiry.

Week one to two: rebuild

Campaigns split by service, negatives applied, ad copy rewritten per service with the offer stated plainly.

Week two to three: landing pages

A dedicated page per campaign, matched to the search and built for one action.

Week four onward: cut and scale

Weekly search term pruning, bids moved toward what books, budget lifted only where the cost per job holds.

Google Ads landing pages built to convert the click

Your ad only has to earn the click. The page has to earn the call, and this is where most of the money is lost. Every campaign we run gets its own page rather than sharing the homepage.

One page per campaign

Someone searching furnace repair should land on a furnace repair page, with the same words the ad used. Sending that click to a homepage listing nine services is the cheapest way to waste a good ad.

The offer above the fold

What you do, where you do it, what it costs to find out, and one obvious way to get in touch. Everything else can wait until they have scrolled.

Proof close to the button

Reviews, licence and insurance details, years in business and photographs of real jobs, placed next to the form instead of buried at the bottom of the page.

Speed and mobile first

Most paid clicks in the trades come from a phone, often standing next to the problem. A slow page fails before it is read, and you still pay for the click.

Forms that are short enough to finish

Name, phone, service, suburb. Every extra field costs you enquiries, and nothing you ask for on the page is worth more than the call itself.

Built by the same team

The Nerds SEO builds the pages in house, so the ad, the page and the tracking are designed together rather than handed between an agency and whoever built your site.

Tested, not guessed

Headlines, offers and form placement tested against each other once there is enough traffic to tell the difference. No redesigns based on opinion.

Reused by your SEO

A page that converts paid traffic converts organic traffic too. Anything we prove on the ads side gets rolled into the service pages ranking underneath.

Google Ads reporting measured in cost per booked job

Impressions, clicks and click through rate tell you nothing about whether the account is working. There is one number that matters, and it is what a customer costs you.

Cost per lead and cost per booked job

Spend divided by real enquiries, then by the ones that turned into work. Once you know both, raising or cutting the budget stops being a guess.

Every call recorded and scored

Tracked numbers on the ads and the landing pages, with recordings, so a lead is a genuine enquiry rather than a wrong number or a sales call.

Search terms reviewed weekly

The report showing what people actually typed, not what you bid on. This is where the waste hides, and it is reviewed every week rather than every quarter.

You own the account

The Google Ads account, the conversion data and the landing pages stay in your name. If you leave, the history goes with you instead of being switched off.

In the report every month

  • Spend, leads and cost per lead by campaign
  • Cost per booked job, once you tell us which leads closed
  • Tracked calls and form fills with the search behind each one
  • Negatives added and the spend they stopped
  • Suburb performance across Columbus and Central Ohio
  • Tests running on ads and landing pages
  • Next month's plan, in plain English

Not in the report

Impression share screenshots, click through rate as a headline metric, and anything else that can improve while the phone stays quiet.

Google Ads questions we get every week

If yours is not here, call and ask. We will give you a straight answer even if it means telling you not to hire us.

Depends on your trade and how many jobs you can actually handle. We would rather start smaller and prove a cost per job you are happy with than spend big while the account is still learning. We will give you a realistic starting number on the first call.
Yes. The spend goes to Google from your own account, in your name, and you can see every dollar of it. Our management fee is separate and it does not scale with your spend, so we have no reason to push your budget up.
Ads if you need leads this month. SEO if you want leads that do not stop when you stop paying. Most businesses that can afford both run ads while the organic work compounds, then reduce spend once the rankings hold.
A separate Google product that sits above regular search ads, shows the Google Guaranteed badge, and charges per lead rather than per click. It is available for most home service trades and it usually produces the cheapest leads in the account when it is set up properly.
For a while, yes. But ads pointed at a slow homepage waste a real percentage of what you pay for, so building dedicated landing pages is usually the first upgrade we recommend once the account is stable.
Yes. It is created in your name and we are given access. If we part ways you keep the account, the history and the data, which matters more than people realize because the learning does not transfer.

Start with the grid scan.

We will scan your map rankings across every suburb you serve, audit your Google Business Profile and citations, and show you exactly where the calls are going instead.

PHONE 614-908-2515
WEBSITE Thenerdseo.com
HOURS Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm

Get your free grid scan

Tell us your main service and the towns you serve. We will send back the map showing where you rank in each one.

No contract pitch on the first call.