Google my business listing and optimization
Local SEO services that put you on the map
Found in Google Maps. Named in AI answers.
Local SEO services get your business ranking in Google Maps and named in AI answers when somebody nearby searches for what you sell.
It works for one reason: locally, you are not competing with the whole internet. You are competing with the four other businesses that serve the same streets.
- Google Business Profile
- The map pack
- Reviews AI can read
- Named in AI answers
Quick answers
The short version
What is local SEO?
The work of getting found when someone nearby searches for what you sell — across three surfaces: the map pack, the results underneath it, and the AI answer sitting above both.
Who is it for?
Businesses with a service area. Trades, clinics, salons, restaurants, lawyers, installers — anyone whose customers are within driving distance and who search before they buy.
Is AI search a separate thing?
It overlaps, but no. Good local SEO helps, and it isn't sufficient — assistants weigh reviews, third-party sources and awards differently to Google. We work both.
Local vs general
Local SEO and general SEO are different games
They share a name and about a third of the work. The rest runs on completely different rules — which is why an agency that is good at one is often quietly bad at the other.
What's identical: fast pages a crawler can read, honest content, real links, and not doing anything spammy. Local SEO isn't a separate discipline so much as general SEO plus a profile, a map and a radius.
What we actually do for your local search visibility
Google Business Profile, set up properly
- Primary category and city verified against what actually ranks
- Services, service areas and hours filled in — most profiles use a fraction
- Real photos, not stock, because stock costs you trust
A profile pointed at the wrong city can sit twenty places down in the town it actually serves. That's a five-minute fix that no one made.
The map pack and your service area
- Proximity is the one factor nobody controls — so we work the rest
- Service areas chosen honestly: places you'd genuinely drive to
- Hours and activity kept current, so you don't read as closed
If you travel to customers, you can rank across a whole city. If they come to you, we go deep on one area instead.
Reviews worth quoting
- A steady, repeatable ask — volume and recency both count
- Wording coached so customers describe the job and the outcome
- Spread across the platforms that AI assistants actually read
"5 stars, great service" tells a machine nothing. "Fixed a burst pipe on a Sunday in two hours" can be matched to a question someone is asking right now.
The citations that actually get cited
- We find the four to seven sources that surface in your industry
- Those profiles get optimised properly, like pages in their own right
- Awards and credible best-of lists, then promoted so they're findable
Nobody needs seventy directory submissions. A handful of sources get quoted in your niche; the rest are a line item on an invoice.
Local content written to be quoted
- What a job costs in your town, and what changes the price
- One page per service and location — never templated city-swaps
- Built from a recorded conversation with you, not a questionnaire
The details that make a page worth citing — real prices, timelines, dimensions — only ever come out of an actual conversation.
A site that loads and can be read
- Static pages that crawlers get instantly, not after running scripts
- Schema, sitemap and clean titles — no phone number in the meta
- Speed and accessibility scored, then fixed
A page a crawler has to work to read is a page that quietly loses to one that isn't.
AI search
Being found and being named are two different jobs.
When someone asks an assistant who to call, it doesn't hand back ten links. It gives an answer, names one or two businesses, and lists the sources it leaned on. Getting into that answer works differently to ranking — here's what actually decides it.
It reads the whole page
Your customers decide in seconds and never reach paragraph three. An assistant reads all of it. For the first time, writing a page properly is rewarded rather than wasted.
It prefers local sources for local questions
Asked what a repair costs in your town, an assistant would rather quote a business in that town than a national directory — if a page exists that answers it plainly. Usually one doesn't.
It reads your reviews, not just counts them
Star ratings are a number; review text is evidence. Assistants match what customers described against what the searcher asked for — so what your reviews say now matters as much as how many there are.
It trusts what other sites say about you
Niche directories, industry awards, credible best-of lists. Assistants lean on a small, repeating set of third-party sources per industry — and generic directories are falling out of that set.
Project Scope
Benchmark, before we touch anything
We record where you rank in the map pack and in search, whether AI assistants name you today, and which sources they cite instead. Search Console, analytics and call tracking go in now, not later. About two weeks.
Fix the foundations
The profile, the handful of citations that matter, the technical basics, and the first service pages. This is where the quick wins live — the category or location fix that moves you several places in a week. First 30 to 60 days.
Publish, earn, and report honestly
Content, reviews and credible listings, at a pace that looks like a business rather than a content farm. Every month you get one page: calls, booked jobs, and where they came from.
FAQ
Local SEO — the questions we get asked
Plain answers, including the ones that don't flatter us.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the work of getting a business found when someone nearby searches for what it sells. In practice that means three surfaces: the Google map pack at the top of the results, the ordinary blue links underneath it, and the AI answers that increasingly sit above both. It is different from general SEO because you are not competing with the whole internet — only with the businesses that serve the same area.
How long does local SEO take?
Some of it is immediate. A Google Business Profile set to the wrong city or the wrong primary category can move several positions within days of being corrected. The rest compounds: expect visible movement in the map pack in about 4 to 8 weeks, and a settled picture at 3 to 6 months. Anyone promising page one in 30 days is either lucky or lying.
What is a Google Business Profile and do I need one?
It is the free listing that puts you on Google Maps and in the map pack, and yes — if you serve customers in a specific area, it is the single highest-return thing you own. It costs nothing, and the average profile is seen over a thousand times a month. Verification takes 10 to 14 days because Google posts you a code, so it is worth starting early.
How do I show up in AI answers like ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews?
By being the best source to quote. AI assistants read whole pages rather than skimming them, and they favour local sources for local questions — so a page on your own site that genuinely answers what a job costs in your town can be cited ahead of a national directory. Beyond your site, they lean on reviews they can read, on niche industry directories, and on awards and best-of lists. We work all three.
Local SEO or Google Ads — which should I do first?
Ads if you need the phone to ring this month, local SEO if you want to stop paying for every call eventually. Most local businesses should run both: ads buy you traffic and data immediately, and that data tells you which searches are actually worth ranking for. Local SEO then compounds while the ad spend stays flat.
Do I really need to be on Yelp?
More than you used to. Yelp is now one of the most frequently cited sources in AI-generated local results, and Google is no longer the only review platform that counts. Yelp also forbids asking customers for reviews, which is exactly why a strong Yelp profile is treated as a credible signal — it is difficult to fake. We will not solicit reviews there, but we will make sure the profile is complete, accurate and worth citing.
The rest of the system
Local SEO works better with these.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Ads bring the calls this month while the SEO compounds. They also tell you which searches are worth ranking for.
Explore Pay Per Click AdvertisingWebsite Development & Design
Getting found is wasted if the page loses them. Fast, readable pages built to convert — and easy for crawlers to read.
Explore Website Development & DesignNext step
Find out where you stand before you spend anything.
A free audit of your profile, your map pack position, and whether AI assistants name you today or somebody else — plus the three things worth fixing first. You can take that list to anyone.