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Hi Jesse, You've received some thoughtful advice so far here from the community. I think it would help if you could clarify your business model, as this is quite important in terms of Local SEO. Does your client have a single physical address or multiple physical addresses throughout California? I'm having a hard time picturing how a single location business could repair appliances throughout the whole length of California, so maybe I'm not understand your business model correctly. And, if the situation is that the business only has a single physical location in the city of Los Angeles, why would you need to rank in cities statewide? In other words, how would it help for the business to rank for 'appliance repair Eureka' unless services can be rendered up there in the north? I think the more specific you can be about your business model, the more targeted advice you'll receive here. Hope this helps!

Hi Jesse, Competing is nearly always possible, but the unknown quantity is time (how long it will take). Citations are definitely important, as some of our members have wisely recommended here, but the authority of the website is, in my opinion, an equal or greater factor in overall local rankings.There is debate about the exact importance of each ranking factor, as evidenced by the recent Local Search Ranking Factors. I recommend that you read this 2013 survey and try to do as much as you possibly can with the client in the foundational ranking factors category of the survey to start with. All of these steps will take time. So, it's definitely possible to outrank competitors, but the effort/funding/time that will take is going to be unique to each market and client. I would share the survey with the client to help them begin to understand the diversity of efforts that need to be made to begin to get in the game. Good luck!

Well thanks for everyone's help, I ended up putting some more work in and finally outranked them