Local SEO & Google Business Profile
Most local work is won above the search results, not in them.
The map pack sits above everything else and takes a large share of the calls. For a service business it is usually the highest-volume channel there is — and the one most competitors have never deliberately worked on.
Tracked as a geographic grid, not a single average position
What the map pack is actually judged on
- ProximityWhere the searcher is standingFixed
- Category and servicesChosen precisely, kept currentOurs
- ReviewsVolume, recency and whether you replyOurs
- Photos and postsEvidence the business is still tradingOurs
What is local SEO, and why does it matter more than the website?
Local SEO is the work of appearing in map results for your service area. It matters more than the website for local services because the map pack appears above the organic results and takes a large share of the calls — many searchers never scroll past it at all.
This is the gap that most surprises owners. A business can rank first organically for "plumber Hamilton" and still be losing most of that demand, because three map listings sit above the result and a substantial share of people tap one of those and never scroll. The website was never the competition.
The good news is that the map pack rewards work almost nobody does. Most local profiles have a category chosen once in 2019, an empty services list, four photographs from the year they were set up, and a Q&A section nobody has ever looked at. Completing those properly is a weekend of effort and it moves rankings.
- AA competitor 400m closer
- BYour business
- CA competitor with 90 more reviews
What Google actually says
Three factors, and only one is fully in your control
- Relevance
- Whether your profile matches what was searched. Driven by the primary category, the service list and the words on the pages the profile links to. The most controllable of the three.
- Distance
- How close you are to the searcher. Not controllable, and the reason no business ranks everywhere — but it is why service-area definition and satellite locations matter.
- Prominence
- How established you appear: review volume and recency, citations, links and offline reputation. Slow to build, and the hardest for a new competitor to overtake.
Those three are what Google publishes. Everything more granular — the ranked "local ranking factor" lists you see quoted with percentages attached — is vendor survey opinion rather than documentation. We work from the three, and measure the results.
What's included
The work, itemised
Category selection, done properly
The primary category is the single biggest lever on the profile and most businesses pick it once and never revisit it. We test what the top-ranking competitors use for the searches you want.
The full services and products list
Every service entered individually with a real description, not left blank. It is a direct relevance signal, it fills space on your profile, and almost nobody completes it.
Service area or address, decided correctly
A storefront and a service-area business are ranked differently and have different rules. Getting this wrong — or listing a service area of forty towns — actively suppresses visibility.
Photographs on a schedule
Real photographs of your work, your vehicles and your team, added regularly rather than once at setup. Profiles with recent images consistently outperform profiles frozen in 2021.
Review generation and response
A request triggered automatically when a job completes, and every review answered. Recency and response rate matter more than raw count, which is why a steady trickle beats a burst.
Questions seeded and answered
The Q&A section is public, anyone can answer it, and most businesses have never looked. Left alone it fills with wrong answers from strangers. Seeded properly it handles objections before the call.
Posts, offers and updates
Regular posts for seasonal services and offers. Modest impact individually, and it is a freshness signal on a surface where most local competitors have posted nothing in two years.
Citations and NAP consistency
Your name, address and phone matched byte-for-byte across the site, the profile and the directories. Inconsistent details are one of the most common causes of weak local ranking.
How it works
Fundamentals, reviews, then measure geographically
Audit the profile against the winners
Week 1What the businesses currently ranking for your money searches have set as categories, services and review cadence — compared against yours. The gaps are usually obvious and usually free to close.
Fix the fundamentals
Weeks 1–2Category, services, service area, hours including holidays, description, links and photographs. Cheap, fast, and it moves rankings before any content or link work begins.
Start the review engine
Weeks 2–4An automated request when a job is marked complete, going to the right customers with the direct link, plus a routine for responding. This is the compounding part.
Track rankings by location, not overall
MonthlyA local grid: where you rank from different points across your service area, not a single average. Local rank is geographic, and one number hides the postcodes where you are invisible.
Why track local rankings as a grid instead of one number?
Because local rank is geographic. You can rank first from a point two streets away and be invisible from six kilometres in the other direction. A single average position hides exactly the postcodes where you are absent, which is the information that would change where you focus.
A grid check samples your ranking from dozens of points across your service area and shows the result as a map. It routinely reveals that a business dominating its own neighbourhood drops off entirely across a boundary that matters commercially — which is a service-area, citation or review problem, not a website problem, and needs a different fix.
It also sets honest expectations. No business ranks everywhere, because distance is a real factor nobody can optimise away. The useful question is not "are we number one" but "are we visible across the area we can profitably serve".
Fit
Who this suits, and who it doesn't
This is a good fit if
- Customers find you by searching for a service plus a place, or "near me".
- You have a physical address or a genuine service area you would drive to.
- Your Google Business Profile has not been meaningfully touched in over a year.
- Reviews arrive sporadically when someone remembers to ask.
- You want to know where in your area you are invisible, not just an average position.
This isn't the right fit if
- You sell nationally with no local element. Then this is the wrong channel entirely.
- You want to rank in cities you have no presence in and cannot serve. Distance is real.
- You want reviews bought or incentivised. Against Google policy, and grounds for removal.
- You want a keyword-stuffed business name for ranking. It works until the suspension.
Related
What this works with
SEO & AI search
Rank for the jobs you want in Google, and get named when someone asks ChatGPT or an AI Overview who to call.
Lead response & follow-up
Enquiries answered in minutes at any hour, quotes chased for a month, reviews requested automatically. Email sequences included.
Analytics & attribution
Call tracking, conversion import and one dashboard that answers what a booked job costs — the number almost nobody can produce.
Questions about local SEO
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the work of appearing in map results and location-based searches for your service area. It is driven mostly by your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your proximity to the searcher and the consistency of your business details across the web.
Why does the map pack matter more than the website?
Because for local service searches it appears above the organic results and carries a large share of the clicks and calls. Many people never scroll past it. A business that ranks first organically but is absent from the map pack is invisible to most of that demand.
How does Google decide local rankings?
Google states three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, distance is how close you are to the searcher, and prominence is how established you appear. Everything more specific than that is vendor opinion, not documentation.
How many reviews do we need?
There is no threshold, and recency and response rate matter more than the total. Forty reviews with three in the last month and every one answered beats a hundred that stopped two years ago. A steady weekly trickle is the goal, not a campaign.
Can we rank in a city we do not have an address in?
It is much harder, because distance is a real ranking factor. A service-area business can rank in nearby towns, but rarely as strongly as a business physically there. Anyone promising first place in a city you have no presence in is not being straight with you.
Should we list a huge service area?
No. A service area covering forty municipalities does not extend your reach and can dilute relevance. Set it to where you genuinely work and would happily drive, and build depth there rather than claiming a radius you cannot serve.
What about Apple Maps and Bing Places?
Both worth claiming, and both routinely ignored. Apple Maps drives real navigation traffic on iPhones. Bing Places feeds the Bing index, which is the retrieval layer behind ChatGPT — which makes it more relevant now than it was two years ago.
Can a suspended profile be recovered?
Usually, through the reinstatement process, and it takes patience and documentation. The common causes are an address that does not match reality, a keyword-stuffed business name, or a category change that tripped a review. We would rather prevent it than appeal it.
We'll run a grid check on your service area.
It shows where across your area you actually appear in the map pack and where you do not. It is part of the free audit, it takes minutes to run, and the map is usually the most immediately useful page in the report.
You talk to Mathew.Not an account manager, and not a sales team.