Lawn-care searches look like grading
“Level my yard” is often someone wanting topdressing sand for a bumpy lawn, a $300 landscaper job. It is not a bulldozer. Broad match pays for those clicks anyway.
Water in the basement, a lot that will not pass. People search when it rains.
Grading searches come in waves. After a heavy rain, “yard drainage” and “regrade yard” triple. Before a build, “lot grading contractor” and “pad prep” show up from builders on a deadline. In between, Google serves you landscapers, skid steer rentals and lawn-leveling sand.
We build campaigns by job, set budgets that rise with the rain, bid where your equipment already works, and track every call through to a quoted and scheduled job.
Jobs from $1,500 to $30k, lot and pad work higher. The upside is real. So is the waste, and here’s where it usually comes from.
“Level my yard” is often someone wanting topdressing sand for a bumpy lawn, a $300 landscaper job. It is not a bulldozer. Broad match pays for those clicks anyway.
If the budget runs out on a sunny Tuesday and the storm hits Thursday, you missed the week that mattered. Flat daily budgets are the wrong tool here.
Rock, fill hauled further than expected, a survey that was wrong. A grading job bid at 35 percent margin can end at 15. The ad dollars have to be tight because the rest of the job rarely is.
Campaigns by job type: Yard and drainage regrading, lot and pad grading for builders, driveway and road grading, erosion and swale work, land leveling for farms and acreage, final grade and seeding. Each with its own ads and page.Rain-triggered budgets: We watch the forecast and raise drainage budgets ahead of heavy rain, then pull back when it dries out. The searches follow the weather, so does the spend.Block the landscaper and the rental counter: Topdressing, lawn leveling sand, skid steer rental, bobcat rental, “how to grade”, laser level. Reviewed every week.Jobs tracked back to Google: Call tracking and your scheduling software (Jobber, Housecall Pro or a shared calendar) so Google bids toward scheduled grading work, not phone rings.Examples from land grading accounts. The real lists run to hundreds of terms and get reviewed every week.
Your account is run by two PPC pros with 20+ years each. No handoff to a coordinator juggling 35 accounts.
Not quarterly. Not “when the algorithm settles”. Every week, by hand, so the junk never gets a chance to pile up.
Your Google Ads account, your data, your tracking, from day one. Leave anytime and take it all with you.
Who likes 12-month contracts? We don’t. We earn the next quarter by making the last one pay.
Typically $2k to $5k a month in a mid-size metro, weighted toward the wet months. Clicks are $6 to $20. A single lot grading job covers a month of spend, which is why we would rather spend less and spend it in the rain.
No. One land grading company per metro. The volume in this trade is modest and weather-driven; splitting it between two clients would mean neither gets enough.
Yes. Builder searches (“grading subcontractor”, “rough grade contractor”) get their own campaign and a page written for a superintendent, with a plan upload and bid request instead of a homeowner form.
Engineered walls at $20k to $100k. Garden walls at $1,500. Same search, different day.
How we run it →House demos at $15k to $40k. Pool removals at $8k. Junk haulers bid on half your words.
How we run it →Equipment costs money whether it moves or not. Keep it moving.
How we run it →The homeowner has a Pinterest board and a budget. Beat the big-box stores to the click.
How we run it →Talk to a senior PPC expert who has run land grading accounts. Never a junior.