Local SEO & Google

Help More Local Customers Find Your Business

If someone nearby searches for exactly what you do, can they find you? And if they do find you, does your business look like one they should call?

Local visibility is more than "ranking #1." It's whether the right people find you at the moment they need you, and whether what they see makes them pick up the phone.

Google Business Profile

This is the listing that shows up in Google Maps and in the local results next to the map. Plenty of owners still call it their Google business page or Google listing. Same thing.

For a lot of local businesses, it's the single most valuable piece of free online real estate they have, and it's often half-finished.

Business name, address, phone and hours that are actually correct
Primary and secondary categories that match what you really do
Services listed in the words customers use
A service area that reflects where you actually work
Photos that look like your business, not stock images
A business description a person would understand
Reviews and responses
The right connection between your listing and your website
Posts and updates where they're genuinely worth the time

Local SEO, in plain terms

Most of local SEO comes down to helping Google answer a short list of questions.

Who are you?
What do you actually do?
Where do you do it?
Is your business information consistent everywhere it appears?
Do customers seem to trust you?
Does your website back up all of the above?

Google Maps visibility

Map results are heavily influenced by where the searcher is, so nobody can honestly promise you the top spot for a whole county.

What we can do is remove the reasons Google has to be unsure about your business: wrong categories, thin service information, an incomplete profile, few reviews, or a website that never mentions the work you do.

Reviews

Reviews affect whether a customer chooses you, and they're part of how your business looks in local results. Most businesses I talk to do good work and simply never ask. There's a straightforward way to fix that on the reviews and reputation page.

Website signals

Your Google listing and your website should tell the same story. If your site never mentions a service, a service area, or basic contact details, you're asking Google to guess. That's usually a website problem more than a keyword problem.

Competitors

Sometimes the most useful first step is understanding why Google appears to trust a competitor more than you. Usually it's not a secret. It's more reviews, a more complete profile, clearer service pages, or simply having been consistent for longer.

AI search visibility

People are starting to ask ChatGPT, Google's AI results and other assistants for local recommendations. There's no "AI ranking" button, and anyone selling you one is guessing.

What does help is unglamorous: accurate business information, website content that clearly explains what you do and where, real reviews, and consistent mentions of your business elsewhere. Machines are trying to understand your business. Make it easy.

What I look at

Depending on the business, this usually includes:

Google Business Profile
Website content and structure
Local search results for your services
Reviews and responses
Competitors nearby
Business information consistency
Service and location relevance
Technical issues where they matter

No 40-page keyword report

You'll get a short list of what matters, in the order I'd fix it, and an honest note about anything that isn't worth spending money on right now.

Where to go next

See how your business looks

I'll look at your Google Business Profile, your website and what shows up when local customers search for what you do.

See How Your Business Looks Let's Talk About Google