Local SEO so people nearby ring you first

Google says more reviews and good ratings help local ranking (its guide to local results). The firm already on the map gets more views, more jobs and so more reviews. Each month your listing stays half-finished, those reviews go to someone else.

The good news: a wrong category or old hours can be fixed the day they're found. In the free audit we search for your services from your area and tell you what we'd change first.

In UK local searches the map often shares the screen with directories: Checkatrade, Yell, TrustATrader, Bark, Thomson Local. Customers trust them and Google reads them, so your name, address and phone should be written exactly the same on each one you use, on your site and on your profile.

If you go to customers (a plumber, a mobile hairdresser, a window cleaner), Google asks you to hide your home address and list the areas you cover instead (its guidelines). Towns and districts work better than postcodes there, because that's how people search. Apple Business Connect and Bing Places get the same details, as iPhones use Apple Maps by default.

When a search has local intent (“near me”, your city's name or something people hire nearby), Google shows a map with three businesses above the regular results. That's the local pack, and Google has published the three things that decide who gets in (tips to improve your local ranking). Years in business isn't one of them, and Google says there's no way to pay for a better local ranking.

Many people still call it Google My Business; today it's the Google Business Profile, and it's the listing people see on the map. We manage it with manager access you give us: ownership stays with you and you can remove us whenever you want. We don't delete profiles or create new ones without explaining why first.

Beyond filling it in, we watch what tends to slip by: edits to your details suggested by Google or by users, unanswered questions, photos uploaded by strangers and special hours for holidays. Two mistakes drag a listing down more than the rest: a generic category and two profiles for the same business splitting the reviews.

If you'd rather do it yourself first, how to rank higher on Google Maps walks you through the steps. And if you need to be on the map from day one while the profile gains strength, Google Maps ads get you there by paying per click.

To do local SEO for Leicester or Aberdeen we don't need to be on your high street. You give us access to the profile, tell us how you work, and we search the way someone from your area would. What matters is knowing the real searches in your patch.

If you have several branches, each gets its own profile and its own page, linked to each other. And if you want to be named when people ask ChatGPT for your service in your town, those same profiles and pages are the starting point; see AI search optimisation.