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How Angi Uses Near Me SEO To Dominate the $506B Home Services Industry
A while back, I stumbled upon Chris Tweten’s popular post about how a clinic’s brand named itself “Dentist Near Me” and whether it should be considered black hat SEO. I initially thought that this was a photoshopped image being used to provoke a reaction. But when I dug deeper, I found that the clinic exists and has a website too.
This was when I got curious about Near Me SEO, and I put my research cap on.
But when I researched online, I found very few blogs around Near Me SEO, and none shared real-life case studies or examples. So, as any SEO enthusiast would do, I did some digging and analyzed multiple websites before I discovered a brand driving 5.3 million organic traffic monthly and ranking #1 for super competitive keywords like “plumbers near me” and “electrician near me” in the United States.
When I did a deep dive analysis, I was blown away by the website design and its strategies to rank for “Near Me” terms. According to Ahrefs, the website ranks for over 47k “near me” keywords.
The company is Angi (NASDAQ: ANGI) (formerly Angie’s List).
Meet Angi, the Yelp for Home Services That Drives 5.3 Million Organic Visits Through Near Me SEO
Angi is a NASDAQ-listed company that is the single go-to place for home projects, big and small. From repairs to renovations and services to products to financing, the company is transforming every touchpoint related to caring for your home.
Because it’s in such a business, cracking Near Me SEO was critical, and the brand knocked it out of the park.
The company ranks for over 2.8 million keywords, driving 5.3 million organic traffic visits.
You can understand the scale of its website with just the fact that it has 2.1 million pages indexed and it operates in over 500 categories.
After doing an in-depth analysis, I found that the company’s SEO success lies in five key pillars:
Pillar #1 — A Scalable Website Structure
The importance of a scalable website structure for a good SEO foundation is almost invaluable. But what is a scalable website structure?
A scalable website structure allows you to add as many categories or products as possible without significantly changing the structure logic. This is key because changing the website structure later is difficult and can significantly impact the website’s organic traffic.
With over 2.1 million indexed pages, Angi requires a scalable website structure to rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). And the brand has nailed it. After analyzing the search patterns, Angi would’ve figured that consumers either search for home services by adding “near me” at the end or by appending a location. For example:
- Plumbers near me
- Plumbers in Colorado
But since the competition of such terms is high and search results are different for each, Angi needed different pages to target these keywords. And it has done precisely that.
If we deep dive into its URL structure, we find that the services’ pages are either in the “near me” or the “company list” folder.
NearMe Folder
The “near me” folder brings in almost 36% of the total organic traffic for Angi. And there’s one Near Me page for each home service.
These pages rank for keywords like:
- Plumbers near me
(https://www.angi.com/nearme/plumbers/) [Volume – 514k] - Locksmiths near me
(https://www.angi.com/nearme/locksmiths/) [Volume – 552k] - Electricians near me
(https://www.angi.com/nearme/electrician/) [Volume – 214k]
But how’s Angi able to show personalized results to visitors from different locations? Visitors can only see the results after they enter their zip code. This is an incredibly clever strategy to prevent visitors from bouncing off the page (as they see the most relevant results as per their location).
CompanyList Folder
The “company list” folder brings in almost 35% of the total organic traffic. Angi has created folders for each state and city in the US, under which it has added all the home services categories.
For example:
- Air Duct Cleaning in Albany, KY
(https://www.angi.com/companylist/us/ky/albany/air-duct-cleaning.htm) - Gas Repair Services in Albany, KY
(https://www.angi.com/companylist/us/ky/albany/gas-leak-repair.htm)
Under this, Angi also lists businesses, allowing them to rank for their brand name searches on Google.
Articles Folder
All the blogs are published inside the articles subfolder. The blogs bring in 25% of the total organic traffic.
For example:
- Appliance Category page
(https://www.angi.com/articles/appliances) - Informational Article
(https://www.angi.com/articles/6-signs-you-need-washing-machine-repair.htm)
Angi’s website structure is such that it gives each new category added an instant authority boost. And this is the main advantage of a scalable site structure. I’m sure they’re using programmatic SEO to create and publish these pages.
Pillar #2 — Building Expertise and Relevancy Through Blogs
One of the main reasons behind the organic success of Angi is the articles it produces across each category. This helps the company build expertise, relevancy, and topical authority, which is critical for SEO.
By publishing highly relevant and quality content across categories, Angi creates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), also recommended by Google’s latest quality guidelines.
The best part about its blogs is that they are all very relevant and solve the pain points of its target customers at different stages. To help consumers understand the projected cost for a particular home service, Angi has dedicated articles that explain the breakdown in detail.
So far, Angi has over 7,000 blogs live on its website, which attracts over 1.2 million organic traffic visits (about 25% of the total organic traffic). But blogs do more than just help the brand build relevancy and authority; they also help with linking strategies.
Boosting the Authority of Landing Pages Through Interlinks
The best part about publishing highly relevant blogs is that you can easily link back to their appropriate landing pages. After analyzing a few blogs, I saw that each article links back to at least 2-4 landing pages. While often overlooked, interlinking can significantly boost rankings for your business pages.
Passive Link Building
While diving deep into Angi’s link-building strategy, I noticed that about 30% of all the backlinks point to the blog. Since Angi’s blogs are so in-depth and rank well in the SERP results, most authors mention them in their articles.
This has helped Angi get links from websites like Fox Business and other major news publications.
Angi also leverages FAQ schema across all its blogs to drive additional traffic through the People Also Ask (PAA) box.
Pillar #3 — Website Design
A website’s design and experience impact SEO in more ways than you think. And while going through Angi’s website, I found that they’ve structured it well and used some out-of-the-box strategies. Let’s dive deeper to understand more.
Clean and Minimal UI
The best part about Angi’s website is its clean and usable website design. Even though the brand has so many home services categories listed, it’s not overwhelming for the users.
I like how the first fold of the website has a search box to help users navigate to the appropriate home services page as per their requirements. The search box moves to the menu bar once you scroll up. So, if the visitor is confused at any time, they can directly search and go to the respective home services page.
Takeaway: By helping visitors navigate to the right page quickly, Angi significantly reduces bounce rate and boosts on-page time.
Content Is King
Content is critical for Angi for both acquisition and conversion. Hence, Angi uses it across its landing page, including the homepage.
While the informational and how-to articles help the company with the acquisition, cost guide articles help with nurturing and conversion. Hence, the company has a section on the homepage that promotes the cost guides, an excellent resource for customers still on the fence about using a home service.
Key Takeaway: Focus on creating content for different buyer stages and strategically link them to relevant pages.
Website Footer
We all know the importance of the role of footer links in interlinking and user navigation. But a few visitors might see showcasing too many pages in the footer as spammy.
So, how do you show hundreds of links in the footer? You use drop-down menus.
Angi has used a clever drop-down design for linking category and city pages from the footer. This allows the company to link over 135 pages from its footer without hurting the user experience. I also like how it has reduced the font size to include more in the same space.
Key Takeaway: Footer links are critical for SEO and interlinking; don’t hesitate to add them.
Personalization
As discussed earlier, while ranking for terms like “plumbers near me,” showing results relevant to the visitor’s location is critical. If they don’t, visitors can bounce off quickly.
Angi understood this, which is why visitors only see the result by entering their zip code. Doing this shows the most accurate results, increasing on-page time and conversions. In fact, according to SimilarWeb, the website’s bounce rate is only 46%.
Similarly, when a visitor comes through a location-based page, say Indianapolis, all the links clicked from the menu bar take visitors to the appropriate home services page for that location.
Pillar #4 — Conversion Focused
According to a benchmark, the average website conversion rate is just 4%. Hence, optimizing and personalizing your website for conversions is very important.
Let’s look at how Angi does it.
Banners
Angi leverages different types of banners and hello bars across the website to convert users and capture its leads.
For example, the company has placed a lead gen form in the footer. It figured that email and zip code were enough to send personalized emails.
Similarly, it uses multiple in-line banners in the blog to push visitors to a more high-intent, conversion-focused landing page.
You can easily use a tool like HubSpot to create forms, pop-ups, and more. Further, you can also set up a nurture sequence to convert the leads that sign up. Most importantly, you’ll be able to measure performance and easily optimize right from the dashboard.
More high-intent blogs, like cost guides, use a mix of hello bars and in-line banners for conversion.
Schema
Most websites overlook the importance of schema markup. However, by leveraging them properly, brands can stand out in SERP results and increase traffic.
Angi leverages different types of schemas on its website, including:
Review Schema
For a lot of its landing pages, Angi uses a review schema. This helps the company improve its CTR on SERP results.
FAQ Schema
FAQ schema helps Angi to rank in PAA boxes and get additional organic traffic.
Calculators
Since Angi already has so much data about the average costs of a particular service, it has used it strategically to convert users. Using calculators, like the one below, the brand shows the most accurate prices for a specific home service in a city. Before opting for a particular home service, the estimated cost largely influences the buyer’s decision.
Calculators are a really effective way to generate leads, and Angi.com has leveraged it across categories. However, lead generation is not enough; it’s equally important to nurture them down the funnel. You can do it using any email marketing software, including HubSpot.
Pillar #5 — Programmatic SEO
Angi manages over 500 categories, each with individual state and city pages. This means that it needs to publish individual city and state pages whenever Angi adds a new category. To automate this and publish pages at scale, Angi leverages programmatic SEO.
The company just needs to set certain formulas for different elements on the homepage, such as the title and description.
For example, Angi can set the title formula as “Get matched with category services in locality, city.” By creating such formulas and algorithms, Angi can completely automate the publishing of new pages. Since the list of service providers is fetched only after entering a zip code, all other page elements can be generated using programmatic SEO.
If you notice by the example above, Angi has also been able to personalize background images using programmatic SEO according to certain conditions. This means all home automation–related services will have one relevant standard image, as will all gardening-related services.
Angi uses the same strategy to create service provider pages. I assume that the company captures details from the business on a form and then uses it to publish such pages automatically. The best part is that these pages will bring in relevant traffic when people search for the brand name of the services directly, too.
Leverage Near Me SEO Strategies
Angi is a great success story for Near Me SEO. It shows how combining programmatic SEO and scalable site structure helps you publish pages at scale and rank for competitive terms.
I hope the learnings from this case study will help you improve your Near Me SEO strategies.
Have any questions? Feel free to ping me on X or LinkedIn.
Author
Piyush Shah is an SEO consultant who has helped grow multiple businesses from nothing to making insane business figures. He is currently working as Head of SEO at Dukaan. In his free time, he’s also a talented ghost music producer for Bollywood, bringing his creativity and passion to the entertainment industry. Follow him on X & LinkedIn.
