Hero Keywords | Why They Matter To Landscaping SEO

The Foundation that Will Transform Your Landscaping Company’s SEO Results

Let’s talk about hero keywords – what I consider the Cornerstone of any SEO campaign for your lawn or landscape business. Honestly, this is going to be one of the most important steps you take as a business owner if you’re trying to do your own landscaping SEO.

I’m going to break this down and try to be really succinct with this. It’s not going to be an in-depth technical dive, but it is one of the most powerful strategies because it forces you to get crystal clear about what each page on your website should rank for.

After over 10 years of building high-converting websites and SEO campaigns for landscaping companies, I can tell you this approach is the foundation that all our successful clients use.

If you’re trying to handle your own SEO for your lawn or landscape company, this step is absolutely critical. With over a decade of working with lawn and landscape businesses across the country, I’ve built SEO campaigns for companies in over 90 niches before specializing in the lawn and landscape space.

This isn’t just theory – these are battle-tested strategies that have moved our clients from page 3 to the top of page 1 on Google. Let me show you exactly why hero keywords matter and how to implement them for your landscaping business.

Why Hero Keywords are the Foundation of Your SEO Strategy

Every successful SEO strategy begins with focus.

When I work with landscaping businesses across our service areas, I see the same issue time and again – websites trying to rank for everything at once. The result? They end up ranking for almost nothing.

Here’s why going to the effort of implementing Hero Keywords is absolutely critical:

• It sets the SEO direction for your entire strategy
• It helps you identify low-hanging fruit in your local market
• It creates an optimal website structure (saving you money)
• It prevents your pages from competing against each other
• It helps establish specific page topic authority

I’ve seen this happen countless times – landscaping businesses start their SEO journey by trying to rank for dozens of keywords without any clear strategy. It’s like trying to hit multiple targets with a single arrow. The power of hero keywords is that they bring laser-like focus to each page of your website.

The end result? Your pages move from being completely off page one to the middle or top of page one on Google. And it all starts with picking the right keywords for the right pages.

What Exactly Are Hero Keywords?

People call them by different names – target keywords, primary keywords, keyword themes – but the concept is simple. We’re dedicating a single high-intention, high search volume keyword to each page on your website.

Think about it this way: If each page could only rank for ONE keyword, what would be the one keyword you’d want it to rank for?

This creates an incredible amount of focus about what each page should be about. Yes, we want to rank for lots of related keywords too, but this gives us the right direction to start with.

For example, on my homepage at Lawn Marketing Edge, I’ve chosen “landscaper digital marketing” as my Hero Keyword. That’s the ONE thing I want my homepage to rank for above all else. Then I give priority to that keyword in key places throughout the page.

How to Choose Your Hero Keywords

Let’s break this down into actionable steps:

Step 1: Map Out Your Pages and Services

First, you need to identify all the important pages on your site:

• Homepage
• Service pages (lawn mowing, landscaping, irrigation, etc.)
• Area pages (if you serve multiple locations)
• Educational pages/blog

Step 2: Choose a Keyword Research Tool

You’ll need some data to make informed decisions. I recommend:

• AdWords Keyword Planner (my preferred choice, though you’ll need an active AdWords account)
• Ahrefs (paid option)
• SEMrush (paid option)

There’s no way around it – at some point, you need to do keyword research. After working with over 300 lawn and landscape businesses over the past decade, we’ve compiled keyword research for almost every service in our industry. If you want to skip this step, you can download our research here.

Step 3: Find the Highest Intention, Highest Volume Keywords

This is where most businesses get it wrong. You need to find keywords that have:

1. High commercial intention – Someone ready to hire, not just researching
2. Good search volume – Enough people searching to make it worthwhile

Let’s look at an example with retaining walls. On a scale of 1-5 for commercial intention (5 being highest):

• “Retaining wall” (Level 1) – Massive search volume but low intention
• “Retaining wall ideas” (Level 2) – Research phase
• “Retaining wall blocks near me” (Level 3) – Getting closer
• “Retaining wall installation + [your city]” (Level 5) – High intention, ready to hire

When I look at keyword data with landscaping clients, we often find that the broader term like “retaining wall” has 10x more searches than specific commercial intent terms. But those high-intention keywords are gold because they convert at a much higher rate.

The key is finding the sweet spot between intention and volume for your specific market.

How to Structure Your Website Around Hero Keywords

Let’s get practical about implementing this on your actual website:

Homepage Focus

Your homepage should target your #1 keyword for your primary city. For example, “Landscaping Jackson TN.”

One common mistake I see is businesses trying to rank their homepage for ALL their services in ALL their service areas. Remember: Google ranks individual pages, not entire websites.

Service Page Focus

Each service page gets its own hero keyword. For example:

• “Lawn Mowing Jackson TN”
• “Landscape Design Jackson TN”
• “Irrigation Installation Jackson TN”

Area Page Focus

If you serve multiple locations, create dedicated pages for each area, treating them like mini-homepages for those locations.

Your Memphis page should genuinely speak to Memphis people with Memphis-specific content. It shouldn’t be a copy of your Jackson page with the city name swapped out. Each service area page is an opportunity to rank for your primary services in that specific location.

Blog Post Focus

Here’s where many businesses make a critical mistake. Don’t use blog posts to target your primary service keywords! This creates what we call “cannibalization” where your pages compete against each other.

Instead, use blogs for:

• Long-tail keywords
• DIY content
• Research-phase queries
• Supporting content that supplements your main service pages

Real-World Examples of Hero Keyword Mistakes

I pulled some random lawn care businesses from across the country (all likely good businesses with quality services) to show how common these mistakes are:

1. Green Beard Lawn Care: Has “North Columbus Lawn Care” in their H1 heading, but it’s missing from their SEO title, which is the most important place to have your hero keyword.
2. Classical Landscape LTD: Missing any hero keyword designation in the SEO title, and their H1 is “Family Owned and Operated” instead of their primary service + location.
3. New Season Landscape: Similar issues with no clear hero keyword strategy.

These are successful companies doing millions in revenue, but they’re leaving so much on the table with these simple SEO mistakes. I promise you these were the first four sites I pulled up from a list of lawn care businesses across the country. This shows how much low-hanging fruit is available if you implement this strategy correctly.

Taking Action: Next Steps for Your Lawn & Landscape Website

Here’s what I recommend you do right now:

1. Map your site pages and decide which keyword each should target
2. Research the best keywords for your specific services and locations
3. Implement your hero keywords in the four critical places:
   • SEO Title
   • H1 Heading
   • Body content
   • URL (careful with existing URLs!)
4. Check your competitor rankings to find opportunities

A word of caution if you have an established site: Be extremely careful when changing URLs. If you have existing pages ranking well, editing URLs without proper 301 redirects can cause you to lose those rankings overnight. For example, if you change from www.yoursite.com/lawn-mowing to www.yoursite.com/lawn-mowing-tampa, Google will still be looking for the original URL unless you properly redirect it.

After helping hundreds of lawn and landscape businesses improve their online presence, I can tell you that this single strategy has consistently delivered the biggest ROI. Our clients typically see ranking improvements within 30-60 days of proper implementation.

Need Help With Your Landscaping SEO?

At Lawn Marketing Edge, we specialize exclusively in digital marketing for the lawn and landscape industry. Over the past decade, we’ve worked with more than 300 landscaping companies across the country, helping them dominate their local search results.

The right time to implement these changes is right now. Spring is approaching, which means search volumes for landscaping services will start surging soon. Getting your hero keywords in place now means you’ll be ranking when customers are actively searching.

If you’d like help implementing these strategies or want a free website analysis to see how your site could improve, schedule a strategy call with our team today.

Let’s get your landscaping business to the next level in 2025!