New business in April. First on Google Maps by June.
Noah Merten opened Merten Land Clearing & Excavation in Loveland, Ohio, this spring. He had a brand-new Google profile, no reviews, and 246 other businesses showing up on the same maps around Cincinnati. He hasn't spent a dollar on ads.
Here's what we set up for him and what it did.
- Client
- Merten Land Clearing & Excavation
- Where
- Loveland, Ohio, serving greater Cincinnati
- Working together since
- Spring 2026
- What we do
- Local SEO, Google profile, website, call tracking
Where they started
Merten opened with the equipment, the experience and a phone number. Online, he was starting from nothing: a new Google profile, a new website and no reviews.
Land clearing and excavation around Cincinnati is a crowded field. When we scanned Google Maps for “land clearing services” around Loveland, 246 different businesses showed up in the top 20 somewhere on the grid, and most of them had years of reviews behind them.
What we did
Set up the Google profile to match the work
One primary category, Excavating contractor, the towns he actually drives to, and every service listed by name: land clearing, forestry mulching, brush hogging, grading, gravel driveways, pond excavation and French drains.
Started a review campaign on day one
Every finished job got a simple ask for a Google review with a direct link. He went from zero to more than 60 reviews in under three months, and every one is five stars.
Built a fast website around his services
mertenlandclearing.com loads quickly on a phone, has a page for each service and shows his own job photos. Google reads the site and the profile together, so they say the same things.
Tracked every call
The number on the profile and the website is a tracked line, so we can count new callers month by month. Missed calls are set up to get an automatic text back, so a busy day on the machine doesn't cost him the job.
Scanned the map on a schedule
We check Google Maps from a grid of points around Loveland instead of one search from one spot. That shows where he ranks for customers all around town.
What happened
The first map scan, on June 4, put him at an average position of 4.2 for “land clearing services”. Eleven days later he was at 1.5. He has held first place around Loveland since, and the Oct. 19 scan had him at 1.3, visible on 98.6% of the grid. The next business on that grid was visible on 73%.
He ranks near the top for the rest of his services too:
| Search | Average position |
|---|---|
| brush hogging | 1.2 |
| land clearing services | 1.3 |
| land clearing companies near me | 1.6 |
| pond excavation | 1.7 |
| earth moving contractors near me | 1.9 |
| forestry mulching | 2.3 |
| grading companies near me | 2.5 |
Google's AI Overview names him first
When someone around Loveland asks Google for the best excavation company, the AI Overview at the top of the results lists Merten first. For land clearing he's second, and Google cites his website as one of its sources. He shows up in the overview for the wider Cincinnati searches too.
| Search | Position |
|---|---|
| best excavation company loveland ohio | 1st |
| best land clearing company loveland ohio | 2nd |
| best land clearing company in cincinnati | 3rd |
| best excavation contractor in cincinnati | 4th |
AI Overviews change from one search to the next. These were checked on Oct. 22, 2026.
The phone
From May 1 to Oct. 22, 114 people called the tracked line for the first time, 43 of them in the last 30 days. A few first-time callers are vendors, and not every call becomes a job, so we report callers, not leads.
Where there's still room
Regular Google results, below the map, are still catching up. He's on the first page for some land clearing searches and the second page for others. That's where the next few months of work go.
Want to see where you show up on the map?
We'll run the same grid scan for your business and walk you through it, free. You'll see where you rank on every side of town and who's ahead of you.
Visit mertenlandclearing.com How we do local SEO All our work