Termite Swarm Season: Pages to Publish Before the Swarmers Show Up

Homeowners search for termites the same week they see winged insects inside the house, so the pages that catch those searches need to be live and indexed well before the first swarm, ideally six to eight weeks ahead. Three pages do most of the work: one that helps people tell termite swarmers from flying ants, one that explains your termite inspection, and one that lays out treatment options. A page published the week the swarm calls start usually arrives too late for that season.

Swarm timing depends on the termite species, the region and the weather, and it can shift from one year to the next. That's exactly why you can't wait for the calendar to tell you. You have to plan from your own history.

Use last year's call log as your calendar

Before you write anything, find the date of your first swarmer call last spring. Look in your scheduling software, your office notes or your phone records for the first time someone called about "bugs with wings" or "flying ants" coming out of a wall or a window frame. If you have a few years of records, note the earliest date in each year.

Call that date Day 0. Everything below counts backward from it.

If Day 0 was early in the year last time, your pages need to go up soon. If your market swarms later, you have more room, but the same order applies.

What homeowners type when they see swarmers

The first search almost never says "termite inspection." People describe what they see:

• "flying ants in house"
• "bugs with wings near window"
• "termites with wings"
• "flying ants or termites"
• "swarming termites what to do"
• "do swarmers mean I have termites"

Only after they suspect termites do they move to company searches: "termite inspection near me," "termite inspection" plus their town, "termite treatment cost," "termite company" plus their town.

The homeowner is often worried and a little embarrassed, and they want two answers fast: what am I looking at, and what should I do next. The pages below answer those in order.

Page 1: Termite swarmers or flying ants

This is the page that catches the first search. It should answer the question in the first few lines, in plain words, then show the differences with your own photos.

What to include:

• The visible differences, written simply: termite swarmers have straight antennae, a thick waist and wings of about equal length; flying ants have bent antennae, a pinched waist and front wings longer than the back ones.
• Photos your techs took of both, side by side. Real photos from your area beat diagrams from a textbook.
• What swarmers inside the house can point to, without alarming anyone. Seeing them indoors is a good reason to schedule an inspection, and an inspection is what tells you whether there's an active problem.
• What to do before the inspector arrives: collect a few in a sealed bag or on clear tape, note where they came from (a window sill, a baseboard, a bathroom), and take a photo.
• A clear next step near the top and again at the bottom: book a termite inspection, with your form and how fast you respond.

Keep the tone calm. A homeowner who reads a scary page closes it. One who reads a clear, matter-of-fact page calls the company that wrote it.

Page 2: Your termite inspection

The second search is about the inspection, and the page that wins it explains exactly what happens. Homeowners want to know:

• what the inspector checks (the foundation, crawlspace or basement, garage, bath and kitchen plumbing areas, window and door frames, wood touching soil, the attic if relevant)
• how long the inspection takes, in your own experience, for a typical home in your area
• what they need to do to prepare (clear access to the crawlspace door, move stored items away from garage walls)
• what they get afterward: a written report, photos, a recommendation
• what it costs, or at least how you price it (some companies charge for inspections, some don't, some credit the fee toward treatment; say what you do)

If you also do inspections for home sales, give that its own section or its own page. The forms, names and requirements for real estate termite inspections vary by state, so say which ones you handle in your state and in what words your local agents use.

Add a photo of your inspector at work, ideally in a crawlspace with a flashlight, and your license number. Homeowners letting someone crawl under their house want to see who it is.

Page 3: Treatment options

Once people know they have termites, they start comparing treatments. This page should explain the options you actually offer and how you decide which one fits a home. Depending on your region and your licenses, that could include liquid soil treatments, bait systems, spot treatments of wood, or fumigation for certain species.

Write about the decision more than the products. What does the inspector look at to recommend one approach over another? What does the first visit involve? How long does it take? What follow-up visits are part of it?

Two cautions. First, don't describe any termiticide as "safe," "non-toxic" or "pet-safe." Product safety language for pesticides is regulated by the EPA and state agencies, so check the product label and your state's pesticide regulatory agency before you describe a product at all. Second, explain warranties and renewals carefully. Termite warranties, bonds and their terms vary by state and by company. Describe yours specifically (what it covers, how long, what the annual renewal includes) and avoid general statements about what a "termite bond" is everywhere.

This page is also where termite work becomes recurring revenue. An annual inspection or warranty renewal, or a general pest plan added after treatment, turns a one-time job into a customer you see every year. Say plainly what the renewal includes and what it costs to keep.

Optional: a page for the town you most want

If one town produces a lot of your termite work, or you want it to, a page about termite inspections in that town can help. It only makes sense if you have something real to say: the neighborhoods you've worked in, the kinds of homes (slab, crawlspace, older wood frame), what your techs commonly find there. A copy of Page 2 with a different town name doesn't help anyone and can look like a doorway page to Google.

The backward schedule

Counting back from Day 0:

1. Ten to twelve weeks before: decide which pages you need, gather photos from last year's inspections and treatments, and write down the questions your office heard most during last year's swarm calls.
2. Eight weeks before: publish all three pages. Link them from your homepage and your main termite service page, and link them to each other. A new page with no links pointing to it is easy for Google to miss.
3. Six weeks before: check that each page is indexed. If you use Google Search Console, the URL Inspection tool shows whether a page is in the index and lets you request indexing. Fix anything that isn't showing.
4. Four weeks before: ask last year's termite customers for reviews, and brief whoever answers the phone. A swarmer call should end with an inspection on the calendar, not a quote for a spray.
5. Day 0: when the first swarm calls come in, post an update on your Google Business Profile with a real photo and a link to the swarmers page. Add any new photos to the pages.
6. After the season: update each page with the questions callers asked this year, so next year's version is better than this one.

This is the core of how we think about SEO planned around the pest calendar: pages ready before each season, judged by how many inspections turn into customers who renew.

If your swarm season is close and you aren't sure your termite pages are indexed or even ranking, our free search audit will check them against the companies currently showing up for termite searches in your towns.