Local SEO and the map pack

Phone out. Map open. Three names compared. That is the whole decision for most local service businesses, and it takes about forty seconds.

Whether you are one of the three is not luck. It is a system. Here is the system.

Your profile

Google Business Profile is the most valuable marketing asset most local businesses own. It is also the most neglected. Categories chosen properly. Services listed completely. Photos current. Hours accurate. None of it glamorous. All of it decisive.

Your reviews

Not just the score. The pace. Forty reviews with three arriving this month looks alive. Four hundred reviews and none since spring looks like it used to be good.

Ask for reviews the moment the work is done. Reply to every one, especially the difficult ones. A bad review answered well does more for you than a good review nobody sees.

Your pages

A location page should describe a real place. The areas you cover. The work you actually do there. The details a neighbour would recognise.

Swapping town names into one template fools nobody. Least of all the systems designed to spot it.

The part people skip

Consistency. Your name, address and phone number should be identical everywhere they appear. Directories, data aggregators, your own site, your invoices. Small mismatches split your presence. They cost you the map pack quietly, and they do it for months.

What we would not do

Buy reviews. Stuff keywords into your business name. Build thin pages for every postcode in the county. These work briefly. Then they cost more than they earned, and in regulated professions they take your reputation with them.

Where to start

Search for your service in your town the way a customer would. Write down the three names. Then open their profiles and yours, side by side. The gaps are the work.

That list is your local SEO plan. Our Local SEO service covers exactly this ground, and it stands on the technical foundations that make the rest work.