Three colors. Three strategies. Same map.
Why this mattersYou have your baseline map. Now we read it. Every heat map breaks into three zones, and each one demands a different strategic response. The same business can have all three on a single map, and the worst thing you can do is treat them the same.
Read this once. Sit with it before you answer.
When you look at your baseline heat map, what specifically are you looking for, and what does each color demand from you as a strategic response?
Where you stand right now.
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- 1Identify the three zones on your heat map (strongholds, contested, dead) and their position ranges.
- 2Explain the strategic logic behind each zone's required response.
- 3Color-code your baseline map with the three zones marked.
- 4Commit the geographic pattern to memory for use in Lessons 9.5 and 9.6.
The whole lesson in a few points.
- 01Three zones. Three strategies. Same map.
- 02Strongholds (positions 1-3, green) get maintenance: ongoing reviews, photos, neighborhood mentions.
- 03Contested zones (positions 4-10, yellow) get active offense and are your highest-impact targets.
- 04Dead zones (position 11+ or X, red) get pursued only if they matter to revenue. Pick your battles.
- 05Color-code your map and commit the pattern to memory. The sketch is the reference for everything that follows.
Zone one — your strongholds.
Strongholds are the grid points where you rank in the top three. The green and dark green areas of your map. These are the neighborhoods where you are winning. Customers searching from those exact spots see you in the local pack. Calls and direction requests from those areas should be a real part of your monthly numbers.
Your strongholds usually cluster around your business address, around any service area you have served heavily over time, and around neighborhoods where you have built up review volume from past customers.
The strategic mistake most owners make is ignoring their strongholds because the green looks fine. Strongholds need protection. Competitors who are working their visibility hard can chip away at your green zones over time. A neighborhood that was solid green six months ago can be yellow today if you stopped posting, stopped collecting reviews, or let your photos go stale.
Your strategy for strongholds: maintain. Keep collecting reviews from customers in those areas. Keep mentioning those neighborhoods in your posts. Do not let them slip.
Zone two — your contested zones.
Contested zones are the grid points where you rank somewhere between position four and ten. The light green and yellow areas. This is where the real opportunity sits. You are visible but not winning. Customers have to scroll past your top-three competitors to see you, and most of them will not.
But here is the math that matters. The work to move a contested zone from position seven to position three is dramatically less than the work to move a dead zone from position 30 to position three. Contested zones are your highest-impact targets.
What contested zones tell you about why you are not winning there. Usually one of three things. You do not have enough reviews from customers in that area, so Google sees less proximity-plus-credibility signal. You have not been mentioning that neighborhood by name in your posts or content. Or you have a competitor with a stronger service-area match in their profile.
Your strategy for contested zones: active offense. Collect reviews from any customer you serve in those neighborhoods. Mention the city or neighborhood name in your posts when you finish work there. Take photos at job sites in those areas and upload them with geotagged filenames. Three to five of these moves over 60 to 90 days typically converts a contested zone into a stronghold.
Zone three — your dead zones.
Dead zones are grid points where you rank position 11 or worse, or where you do not appear at all. The orange, red, and X marked areas of your map. In a dead zone, you are functionally invisible. A customer searching from that spot will not find you unless they specifically type your business name.
Dead zones are the hardest to move. They are also where you stop pretending. If your service area on paper includes neighborhoods where your map is solid red, that is not really your service area. That is wishful thinking.
But dead zones are not always failures. Sometimes they reveal a strategic decision. If a dead zone is in a neighborhood you do not really want to serve, fine. Leave it red. You are not wasting energy chasing visibility you do not want.
If a dead zone is in a neighborhood you absolutely need to serve to hit your revenue goals, that becomes your Module 10 priority. You need a dedicated geographic page on your website for that area, plus targeted content and reviews from any customer you can pull from there. Strategy for dead zones: pick the two or three that matter most to your revenue. Build website pages for them. Mention them in content. Try to seed reviews from any customers you have served there. Accept that movement will take 90 to 180 days minimum.
Color-code your map.
Open your baseline heat map. Identify each zone using the rules above. In your workbook on the Three Zones page, sketch a simplified version of your map with three sections marked. Strongholds in green. Contested in yellow. Dead zones in red.
You do not need to be precise. A rough sketch is fine. The point is to commit each zone to memory so you can hold the geographic pattern in your head when you make strategic decisions later. This sketch becomes the reference map for the rest of Module 9 and the geographic strategy in Module 10.
Strongholds you protect. Contested zones you attack. Dead zones you choose.
The next lesson is where we identify exactly which competitors own the zones you do not.
The vocabulary that follows you.
- Stronghold
- A cluster of green or dark green grid points where you rank in positions 1 to 3. Where you are winning. Requires maintenance, not new effort.
- Contested zone
- A cluster of light green or yellow grid points where you rank in positions 4 to 10. Visible but not winning. The highest-impact zone to move because conversion from 7 to 3 is much cheaper than from 30 to 3.
- Dead zone
- A cluster of orange, red, or X-marked grid points where you rank position 11 or worse, or do not rank at all. The hardest zones to move. Requires a deliberate decision to pursue or accept.