Local SEO built around the searches happening nearby
For a business with a catchment, the three results in the map pack take most of the clicks. Getting into them is a different job from ranking a web page, and it is usually cheaper.
Results in the local pack, above the organic listings
Organic impressions for one client in 12 months
Based here, working across the North West and the UK
Three things decide the map pack, and your website is only one
Local rankings come down largely to relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you cannot change. The other two you can, and most businesses have barely started on either.
Relevance is whether your Google Business Profile actually describes what you do, in the categories and service terms people search. A great many profiles are set to one broad category and left there for years.
Prominence is mostly reviews, consistent details across the web, and whether the rest of the internet treats you as an established business. Review volume and recency do more work here than almost anything else, and asking costs nothing.
What local SEO actually consists of
Google Business Profile
Categories chosen deliberately, every service listed individually, real photographs, opening hours that are correct, and the attributes and posts most profiles never touch.
Reviews, as a habit
A process for asking at the right moment, a direct link that removes the friction, and replies to the ones you get. Steady recent reviews beat a large number from three years ago.
Citations and consistency
Your name, address and phone number matching everywhere they appear. Old addresses and dead numbers scattered across directories actively undermine the profile.
Location pages worth having
A genuine page for each area you really serve, with real detail. One page listing thirty towns ranks for none of them, and thin duplicates of the same page are a pattern that gets filtered out.
A site that converts the click
Tappable phone number, obvious address, fast on a phone. Local searches are urgent and mobile, and a slow page wastes the position you paid for.
Knowing it worked
Local enquiries arrive as phone calls, so without call tracking the channel looks like it produced nothing at all.
For most local businesses, reviews and a properly built profile will outperform another six months of blogging. It is the least glamorous work available and the most reliable.
Liverpool, and the towns around it
We are based in Liverpool and work across Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and into North Wales. We have pages for St Helens, Warrington, the Wirral, Widnes and Runcorn, Southport and Chester, because those markets genuinely differ.
We also work with multi location businesses nationally, where the problem changes shape: one profile per site, consistent data across all of them, and location pages that do not compete with each other.
What people ask about local SEO
We do not have a shopfront. Can we still appear?
Yes. Google supports service area businesses, where you hide the address and declare the areas you cover. What you cannot do is invent locations. Virtual offices and addresses you do not operate from are against the guidelines and get profiles suspended, which is a much worse outcome than ranking modestly.
How many reviews do we need?
Enough to look established next to whoever is currently above you, which means the answer is competitive rather than absolute. Look at the top three in your map pack and you have your target. Recency matters as much as volume, so a steady trickle beats an occasional push.
Should we have a page for every town we cover?
Only for places you genuinely work in and can write something true about. Mass produced location pages with the name swapped are a well known pattern and they are filtered or penalised. Four substantial area pages will comfortably outperform twenty thin ones.
Our competitor is clearly faking their address. What can we do?
Profiles can be reported through Google’s redressal process, and genuinely fake listings do get removed, though it is slower than anyone would like. It is worth doing, but it is not a strategy. Building a stronger profile than theirs is more reliable than waiting for someone else to take theirs down.
Can you manage the profile for us?
Yes, as part of ongoing SEO work or on its own for businesses where the profile is the main channel. For some small local businesses that is genuinely all they need, and we would rather tell you that than sell a retainer that does not pay for itself.
Talk to us about local search
Tell us the domain and what you sell. We will tell you what is holding it back and whether it is worth fixing.
