Get found on Google Maps
Local search engine optimisation (SEO) is the work that puts a business with a door into the map results: the listings Google shows above the websites. We complete your Google Business Profile, post to it, answer every review, keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere, and write the location page the listing points to. Starter's search option covers it for $2,000 a month.
In detail
What decides who shows up on Google Maps?
Three things, by Google's own account: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is whether your listing's category and description match the search. Distance is how near you are to the person searching, which nobody can change for you. Prominence is how well known you are: reviews, how complete and active the listing is, and the mentions and links around the web. A local search agency works on the first and the third, and should be honest that the second is fixed.
The local method
Pick the right primary category
The single field that matters most and is most often wrong. We choose it from what your buyers search, then add only the secondary categories that are true.
Complete everything else
Hours, holiday hours, services, products, photographs of the actual premises, the booking or messaging link. An empty field is a question Google answers with someone else's listing.
Make the name, address and phone identical
On the site, the listing, the social profiles and the directories, character for character. Two versions of your address split the trust between them.
Post and reply
Google Business posts every month and every review answered, the bad ones first, in your voice rather than a template.
Build the page the listing points to
One page per location or service area, with the address, the map, the hours and the answer to the question people search before they visit.
Can you get more Google reviews without breaking the rules?
Yes, by asking every customer at the right moment, with a direct link, and never paying or discounting for a review. Google's policy forbids incentives and review gating, which means asking only the happy customers, and listings caught doing either lose reviews or get suspended. We set up the ask: the link, the line your staff says, the card at the till or the message after delivery. Then we answer every review, because the next buyer reads the replies as closely as the reviews.
Local work we can show
For the Gettysburg Museum of History in Pennsylvania we repaired the museum's listing and wrote the event page for its October anniversary weekend, so people searching for the weekend reached the museum rather than a reseller. No figure is published for that work yet, and we would rather say so than invent one.
The studio is in Karachi, and the same method runs for a cafe, a clinic or a shop there. The Karachi page sets out what differs: the area names people type and the WhatsApp button that does the work a booking form does elsewhere.
What local search will not do
- Move you closer to the searcher. Distance is the one factor nobody can change.
- Survive a fake address. Listings at a virtual office or a home you do not trade from get suspended.
- Replace a bad experience. Reviews follow the service, not the other way round.
- Rank you in a town where you have no real place to stand.
The proof
The work this page leans on.
Questions
The questions that follow.
Is local SEO different from ordinary SEO?
It is the same discipline aimed at the map. The listing, the reviews and the location pages matter more; long articles matter less.
Do I need a website for local SEO?
Not to appear on the map, but the listing does better with a site that confirms the same name, address and services, and buyers check the site before they visit.
What does local search cost?
Starter's search option is $2,000 a month: four page optimisations, one researched article and Google Business posts. Standard maintains the profile with four posts a month and doubles the pages.
Do you work with businesses that have several branches?
Yes. Each branch gets its own listing and its own page, with the business name written the same way across all of them.
Can you remove a bad review?
Only if it breaks Google's rules, through Google's own report. Otherwise we answer it plainly and in public, which usually does more good than removal would.
Read next
Where this leads.
What it costs is on the pricing page, and how a month runs is on how we work.
Start with one call.
Tell us what you sell. On one call we will tell you what we would make first, and what it costs.