By Thomas Ballantyne & Dennis Yu
Most pest control SEO advice is written by agencies that have never answered a phone in a branch office. This guide is different. Thomas Ballantyne spent nearly two decades running marketing inside Bulwark Exterminating — one of the best-known family-owned pest control companies in America. Dennis Yu is a former search engine engineer who has managed over a billion dollars in ad spend for brands like Nike and the Golden State Warriors.
We flew to Phoenix, filmed for days, and turned everything Thomas has learned about winning pest control customers on Google into the chapters below. No theory. No fluff. The exact systems, screenshots, and checklists.
What’s inside
- Google Business Profile — Set up, verify, and rank in the local three-pack — and keep your profile suspension-proof.
- Local Service Ads — Get the Google Guaranteed badge and pay per lead, not per click, at the very top of search.
- Location Service Pages — Build the pages that turn Maps traffic into booked jobs, city by city.
- Google Search Console — See exactly which searches bring homeowners to you — and fix what’s holding you back.
- Google Analytics — Know which channels actually drive pest control leads, so you spend where it works.
- AI Search & Google SGE — Stay visible when homeowners ask Google’s AI and ChatGPT who to call.
- Reputation Management — Turn reviews into rankings and revenue — earn them, respond to them, defend against fakes.
Who wrote this
Thomas Ballantyne
Director of Marketing at Bulwark Exterminating — a practitioner, not an agency. Thomas has spoken on review marketing and local SEO at Pubcon and SMX West, been featured by Search Engine Land, and is the subject of an official Yelp advertising success story. Read Thomas’s full story →
Dennis Yu
CEO of BlitzMetrics and builder of Local Service Spotlight. Former Yahoo! search engine engineer, featured in Forbes, Adweek, and HubSpot. Dennis has taught digital marketing at universities including Johns Hopkins. Read Dennis’s full story →
Why we can say this with a straight face: Thomas still runs marketing at Bulwark. That means we don’t take on pest control clients in markets where Bulwark competes — a conflict-of-interest rule an agency would never volunteer. It’s also exactly why this guide exists: it was written from inside the industry, not sold to it.
More from the pest control corner
When we filmed this book in Phoenix, Dan Leibrandt — founder of Pest Control SEO and one of the sharpest young minds in this niche — was in the room. Dan went on to publish his own excellent book and hosts the Local Marketing Secrets podcast. If you want a dedicated pest control SEO agency, he’s the one we point people to.
See where your company stands — free
Before you implement a single chapter, get your baseline. We run a free audit of your Google presence — your profile, your reviews, your pages, your entity — and show you your score.
Ready for done-for-you? The Maps Visibility System ($1,500/mo — the same system we run in every home-service industry) handles your Google Maps rankings for you. Or put your own name in the spotlight with a personal brand website for about $1/day.