SEO for Ann Arbor businesses

Ann Arbor is a university city first. The University of Michigan owns 22% of the land downtown, and its students, staff and patients make up a large share of the people searching for local businesses. A big part of that audience is new every year. Each fall, thousands of people arrive who have no favorite barber, dentist, coffee shop or mechanic yet. They pick one from Google.

That changes what ranking is worth here. In a town where everyone already knows everyone, a business can live on word of mouth. In Ann Arbor, the business at the top of Maps in late August and September gets first shot at a whole new set of regulars. The one on page two waits for referrals.

It also means the slow weeks are real. When classes end, part of your search traffic leaves with them. I report your numbers against the same month last year, not the month before, so a quiet June doesn’t look like something broke.

The Ann Arbor metro area, as the federal government defines it, is all of Washtenaw County. Your customers treat it that way too.

• Ypsilanti. The built-up parts of Pittsfield and Ypsilanti townships make Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti effectively one urban area. Ypsilanti had 20,648 people in 2020 and is home to Eastern Michigan University, which brings its own student calendar, and the Depot Town district.
• Saline and Dexter. Saline had 8,948 people in 2020. Dexter had 4,500 and sits about nine miles northwest of Ann Arbor. Both are smaller towns where people search by the town name, and where a business with real pages for them is competing with fewer businesses than it would downtown.
• The commercial strips. Plenty of Ann Arbor businesses aren’t downtown at all. Briarwood Mall and the Ann Arbor-Saline Road area to the south, Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road on the east side, Plymouth Road to the northeast and the Westgate and West Stadium area on the west side are all commercial areas people search by name.

In regular search results, a page for each area you serve can reach across the county. In Maps, distance still rules. So I start by mapping where your profile ranks now, then decide which areas are worth a page.

How do I rank when my competitors already have good marketing?

Ann Arbor’s economy leans on technology, research and health care. Domino’s, Zingerman’s and Duo Security are all based in or near Ann Arbor, and a lot of local businesses have owners or customers who know what good marketing looks like. Assume the businesses you’re up against have decent websites.

So the gap gets closed on specifics. A page for each service, not one page listing all of them. Real photos and real answers to the questions your customers ask. A Google Business Profile with the right primary category, complete services, current hours and a steady flow of reviews. Listings that match everywhere. None of that is clever. I check which pieces your competitors have skipped and start there.

How does the medical center change searches for my business?

The university’s medical center is one of the largest employers in the region, and patients and families come in from well outside the city. Many of them stay nearby, eat nearby and need services nearby, and they search the way visitors do, on a phone and by distance from the hospital.

If you’re a practice, a pharmacy, a hotel, a restaurant or a service near the medical campus, your pages and your profile should say where you are relative to it, with parking and directions spelled out. Staff work shifts, too, so accurate hours matter more than usual. Someone looking for food at 11pm checks your hours on Maps before they get in the car.

What will I see in my report each month?

Maps rankings checked from points across Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and the towns you serve, so you can see where your reach stops. Search rankings for the terms that bring you customers. Calls, direction requests and website visits from your profile. Form leads and bookings, compared with the same month last year so the school calendar doesn’t hide the trend. Then what I worked on, why, and what’s next. If something dropped, it’s in the report with my read on why. For businesses that lean on students, I also flag the weeks around move-in and graduation, so you can see whether the ranking work paid off when the new crowd arrived.