The third biggest search in pest control is not a pest problem at all. It is a property transaction with a settlement date attached, and it behaves nothing like the rest of the trade.
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Australian search volumes, Semrush.
Three channels, three jobs. A business usually needs all three, staggered rather than launched at once. It is the same model our Brisbane digital marketing agency runs across every industry we work in, only the numbers underneath it change.
META ADS
Nobody searches for pest control until they see something. Meta puts your name in front of your suburbs beforehand, and it is the right channel for annual termite reminders, which is the closest thing this trade has to recurring revenue.
GOOGLE ADS
Catches them the moment they search, including the ones Meta warmed up. Fastest of the three to produce a booked job, and the only one that responds the morning somebody finds termite damage.
SEO
Takes over the same job searches Google Ads is paying for, permanently and for free. Slowest to arrive, cheapest to keep, and the reason your paid bill should fall over time.
Google Ads tells us within about six weeks which searches actually produce booked jobs, so SEO gets aimed at those rather than guessing for six months. Meta retargeting picks up everyone who read a pest page and did not call. And as SEO ranks for a pest or a service, we pull the paid spend off it and move it to the next one.
The work behind each one, so you can tell whether a proposal is describing effort or just naming a platform.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per job type rather than a Services list. Google Business Profile built properly, categories right, and a review process that runs after every job. Suburb pages for the areas you actually service. This is what moves the map pack and the job terms.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by pest and by service, not one campaign called Pest Control. Negative keywords so you stop paying for DIY sprays, Bunnings products and pest control courses, which is where a lot of this budget goes. Call tracking, because this trade is booked by phone.
THE ONE MOST OPERATORS SKIP
The one most operators skip. Best used for annual termite reminders to past customers and for staying visible in your suburbs, so you are the familiar name the day somebody finds something in the kitchen.
We start from which work you want more of, not from which service we would like to sell you. An operator doing general spraying who has never chased pre-purchase inspections needs a page and agent relationships, not more cockroach traffic. A new business with no reviews needs Google Ads while the SEO catches up, and Meta Ads for the reminders. We will tell you on the call if one of the three is not worth running for you.
Not a strategy document. These are the three pages we would put up first for a Brisbane pest control operator, why those three, and the numbers behind each one.
Built around “termite inspection”
A different business hiding inside your business. Pre-purchase and pre-sale inspections, turnaround time, what the report covers and whether it meets the standard the lender wants. Buyers, conveyancers and agents all search this, and agents refer repeatedly once they trust you.
Built around “cockroach pest control”
Cockroaches 2,900, ants 1,900, possums 1,900, spiders 1,600. Different pest, different panic, different season, and a customer who wants to read that you have dealt with exactly their problem. One page each beats a Services list with eight bullet points, every time.
Built around “pest control near me”
The biggest number and the hardest to move, because it is decided in the map box on reviews and proximity. Worth doing properly, worth being honest that it is slower than the service pages, and worth not spending your whole budget on.
Tell us your suburbs and the work you want more of. We will come back with the real search numbers for your patch and the three pages we would start with. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep the research either way.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Because most of that 5,400 a month is not a pest problem. It is people buying or selling a house whose lender or conveyancer wants a timber pest report before settlement. They have a deadline, they are not shopping on price, and they need to know your report meets the standard. Written properly, that page also earns agent referrals, which outlast any advertising.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
Cockroaches, ants, possums and spiders total 8,300 searches a month between them, more than “pest control near me”. Each is a different problem with a different urgency, and a customer with a possum in the roof cannot tell from a bulleted list whether you have ever dealt with one. Four real pages beat one Services page every time.
Some of it, but we are not going to put a number on it here. Our two data sources disagree on how strong the swing is, so any seasonal claim we made would be half guess. What we will do is check your own account data year by year before recommending you shift budget by season.
For “pest control” and “pest control near me” they are close to the whole game, because both are decided in the map pack. A steady trickle after every job beats a burst of twenty followed by two years of nothing.
DIY sprays, Bunnings, home remedies, pest control courses and licensing. On broad match an account will quietly buy all of them, and none of those people are going to book a technician.
Google Ads produces calls within days. Organic takes three to six months to move and six to twelve to become a real part of your work. Termite inspection enquiries tend to convert fastest because they arrive with a settlement date attached.
Yes, for two things most operators never do: annual termite reminders to past customers, which is the closest this trade has to recurring revenue, and staying visible in your suburbs so you are the familiar name the day somebody finds something. Our social and paid social team runs it.
Yes. The search behaviour is the same anywhere in Australia, only the suburbs, the pests and the competitors change. The volumes quoted on this page are national.
We look at what your suburbs actually search for by pest and by service, your Google Business Profile, your reviews against the operators ranking above you, and whether your site has real pages for the work you want more of. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
